


Luminescence.

by doctorkaitlyn



Category: Borderlands, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Blood and Gore, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Sexual Content, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-05 14:55:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1822513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Derek ever lays his eyes upon an actual Siren, he's five years old.  She's beautiful and terrifying, as powerful as the stories have made her out to be and his mother tells him that if he ever meets one again, he should never trust them.</p><p>But when he returns to the planet of Pandora to get revenge on the bandit warlord who executed his parents and sister, he ends up joining forces with Stiles, a young Siren who knows exactly what it feels like to lose your family.  It starts out as a relationship of convenience and mutual distrust.  It doesn't stay that way for long.</p><p>(or, that Borderlands fusion where Stiles is a Siren and Derek is kind of a Soldier/Hunter, and they join together for revenge and end up with something far more complicated)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. you should never trust a Siren.

**Author's Note:**

> while this is a fusion with the Borderlands universe, it's not necessary to have played the games first in order to understand it. Additionally, I did adapt some aspects of the Sirens for this story so it isn't completely accurate to the game. 
> 
> **warning** : this story will contain fairly graphic descriptions of people being shot or otherwise injured, so keep that in mind! I hope you lovely readers enjoy!

The first time Derek ever lays his eyes upon an actual Siren, he's five years old. He's seen pictures of them before, illustrations in some of the tattered storybooks his mother had found, but that had been different, _so_ much different than seeing one in the flesh. 

It happens in a decrepit bar in an unnamed town and even though he's young, Derek knows it isn't a place for children, or anyone really, for that matter. There's a thick haze of smoke hovering around the ceiling, nearly blocking out the dim light from the old, bare bulb that hangs from the roof. Derek is used to places that don't smell very nice but the bar _stinks_ , like old sweat and gun oil and rot. He's sitting on a wobbly stool in front of the bar counter and he hasn't made the mistake of touching the counter's wood surface for quite awhile; it's tacky with homemade brew and something dark that Derek thinks might be blood. 

He really wishes that he'd stayed back at camp with his dad and his sisters. But instead, he'd begged his mom to bring him along on her adventures and surprisingly, she'd agreed. She's standing right behind him, her lower back pressed against his shoulders, negotiating with some man over a gun. She's talking too rapidly and too quietly for Derek to hear anything more than the tone of her voice over the bustling crowd and he's been sitting patiently for what feels like ages, only occasionally swinging his feet into the counter in front of him. 

But despite his remarkably high level of patience, he's still a young boy who gets bored and even though his mother has told him more than once that it's dangerous to stare on Pandora, he can't help but at least look around the bar a little bit. Most of the people in the place are male, wearing clothes covered in dust and scorch marks, strapped from head to toe with guns and knives. 

But on the stool beside him, there's a woman. 

She's wearing layers upon layers of bland, colorless fabric, wrapped around her body in complicated folds that make it hard to gauge how large she actually is. Part of the garment covers her head as well but there are a few locks of thick, brown hair dangling in front of her face. It doesn't look like she has any weapons on her and she's embroiled in conversation with the bartender, whose skimpy clothes and bright pancake makeup seem downright gaudy when compared to the relatively neutral tones of the mystery woman's clothes and hair. 

“I'll be just another minute Derek,” his mother says, twisting around and ruffling his hair slightly. 

“Okay Mom,” he answers absently, still focused on the woman. The bartender disappears into a back room but the woman is only alone for a few seconds before there's a man sidling up beside her, squeezing into the space between her stool and Derek's. He smells so thickly of brew and dirt that Derek has a hard time swallowing down vomit and his dark gray shirt is covered in multiple stains of varying colors and sizes. 

“Whatcha hidin' your pretty face for?” he asks the lady, leaning his back against the bar, arms crossed over his chest. There's a battered pistol hanging in a holster on his hip and Derek thinks that he could steal it easily if he wanted to, but his mom would get mad at him if he did that. The woman doesn't answer, doesn't even move, but that doesn't seem to deter the man. Instead, he moves closer, sliding over a few inches until his thigh is pressed up against the edge of the woman's stool. 

“I can protect you, y'know,” he says. “Pretty thing like you, someone should be keeping you safe.” Derek doesn't know what to do, doesn't know if he should tell his mom or stay quiet. The bartender is back, holding a florescent pink pistol that's almost as bright as the tank top she's wearing and there's a grim smile on her face, one Derek has seen on his parent's faces when they know something bad that's out of their control is about to happen. 

“Sugar, I _really_ wouldn't do that if I were you,” the bartender says but it's too late. The man's fingers, caked with filth and grime, have already pushed back the twist of fabric draped over the woman's head. The rest of her hair cascades down her shoulders and when she turns her head, Derek gets an actual look at her face. She's very pretty (not as pretty as his mother, but that goes without saying), with a small, upturned nose and eyes that look almost yellow in the dim light. While half of her face is simply smooth, pale skin, the other side is... different. It's covered in a number of thin lines that look like tattoos, trailing over her cheek and jaw. But unlike the tattoos Derek has seen, the lines appear to be living; they're _pulsing_ with color, like her bloodstream has somehow become radioactive. 

The lines start out as a soft, dusky pink but as Derek watches, the color grows more and more vivid until it's more of a magenta hue. The bar has gotten quieter, as more and more heads turn to watch and behind him, Derek can feel that his mom has turned around as well; his head is now resting against her stomach instead of her back. 

“Derek, I don't think you should watch this,” she says, but she makes no efforts to turn him away. The woman shifts on her stool, swinging her legs around so that she's facing the man head-on and Derek can see the lines of color pulsating on her left hand as well. 

The man is babbling out an apology, his face deathly pale except for the smudges of dirt streaked across it, but the woman doesn't even look like she hears his pleading. She simply stares at him and raises her hand until it's at the same level as his face. Her index finger slowly flicks out and just barely brushes against his forehead just as his stammering reaches its crescendo. 

There's a bright flash of color, so bright Derek has to look away and when he turns back, the man is gone, soundlessly winked out of existence, not even his clothes or a bullet to show that he was ever there at all. The woman doesn't break her streak of silence; she silently takes the bright pink gun from the bartender's outstretched hands and slides off her stool with ease. As she straightens up, the careful drapery of her garment falls open in the front and curled up against her chest, bundled up in a makeshift sling, is a baby. Derek can only see his head, but he can only be a few months old at the oldest. There's a fine covering of dark hair on his head and, like his mother, he has a tiny, upturned nose and colored lines gently pulsing on one half of his face. But while his mother's are still a fiery magenta, the baby's are more of a serene blue, like the color of the sky on a cloudless, dry day.

When Derek looks back up, the woman is staring straight at him. It's only for a few seconds but for those long moments, Derek can't look away, certain that the woman is about to touch him and make him disappear as well. 

But then she's moving, swiftly tucking the still-sleeping baby under layers of fabric. She strides out of the bar without looking back and the volume slowly starts to build back up as people return to their prior conversations. 

“C'mon Derek,” his mother says, effortlessly scooping him off of the stool. “Let's get back to camp.” 

Although it's only been a minute or so since the woman (who Derek now understands to be one of the Sirens from the stories his mom has told and shown him) left, she's nowhere to be seen in the streets outside the bar. His family is camped in the shadows of a cliff a mile or so outside of the town and Derek clings to his mother's strong back, feet occasionally bumping against where her newly acquired pistol is holstered on her hip. 

“Mommy, where did that man go?” he asks eventually, his small chin hooked over his mother's shoulder. 

“I don't know,” she says quietly, bumping him higher up her back. “You may not ever see one again Derek, but you should never trust a Siren.” 

“Okay,” Derek says and as far as he can recall, they never speak about the topic again.

&.

When Derek returns to Pandora after a decade away, the planet has scarcely changed. The instant he steps off of the freighter plane he'd caught a ride on, he catches the unmistakable stench of trash and decay. The sun is still scorching, the wind still tears like sandpaper and after a moment of gazing upon the town, he bows his head and starts walking.

Ten years. It's been ten years since he stepped foot on the godforsaken planet, ten years since he watched his mother, father and older sister be executed by bandits. Him and his younger sister Cora had run, gotten off Pandora the next day and Derek had never planned on coming back. 

Except he'd heard a rumor, a whisper among the members of the Crimson Lance, that the bandit who'd killed his family, a wretched man named Argent, a man Derek had believed to be long dead, wasn't deceased after all. He had reemerged and as long as he remained alive, Derek wasn't going to sit on the sidelines. He wasn't going to just wait for the man to destroy more lives. 

And of course, he couldn't pass up the opportunity for revenge. 

There are a few boarding houses in the town, but they're all ramshackle at best and Derek is sure they're full of spies willing to report any sign of unusual activity to the nearest bandit overlord. Derek's tried to make himself look inconspicuous, tried to keep his clothes muted and ragged so that he'll fit in, but it's rather difficult to disguise the bright green sniper rifle strapped to his back. It's one of the best weapons he's ever used, a memory of his time in the legions of the Lance but it isn't very discreet, even with dust and dirt covering its casing and Derek can feel dozens of pairs of eyes gazing upon him as he walks through the rusted gates of the town. 

Beyond that, the landscape is cracked earth and crags on the horizon, all of it a dusty orange, dotted with the sun-bleached skeletons of absolutely massive, long-dead creatures. There's a garage sitting just outside the gate, filled with squat four-wheeled vehicles, ungainly things called runners and although renting one of them would make his journey much easier, he has a grand total of no money, so he keeps walking. 

And walking. And walking. 

He walks until his feet feel chafed in his boots and his lips are cracked with wind burn. The sun has already gone below the horizon and he knows he only has four or five hours before the sky leeches from blue to red again; night doesn't last long on Pandora. There's a natural cave carved into the side of one of the crags that dot the area and although it doesn't offer much in the way of cover, it'll have to do for the night. He doesn't even bother lighting a fire; he simply eats some of his bland, military issue rations and stretches out, back against the wall of the cave. 

When he wakes up two hours later, he's lying on his stomach, face pressed into his backpack. The night has cooled further and there is someone sitting astride his back, someone who has a tight grip on his hair and is pressing a razor sharp blade to his throat. Yet once the initial shock wears off, his heartbeat stays steady; he's been much closer to death before and escaped every time. 

“Can I help you?” he asks dryly, feeling the knife nick his neck when he swallows. 

“Gimme one reason why I shouldn't cut your throat.” The voice is low but young, that's easy enough to tell and the words are artificial, like they've been peeled from a book. Derek shrugs, moving slightly so that the weight of the person on top of him is more evenly distributed. 

“Because I've never done anything to you,” Derek responds. There's a knee digging into the back of his thigh but he tries not to wince. “I just got here today. If you want to steal my stuff, just get it over with, I'm tired.” He can feel more blood trickling down his throat in tiny rivulets but it still isn't anything serious. He can't see the man but he can sense hesitation in his body, in the way the weight on his back seems to lessen slightly and the way the knife moves a fraction of an inch away from his neck.

Derek makes his move. He tilts his head down, ignoring the pain of the knife pressing against his skin, and bites down on the man's hand as hard as he can. The man yelps loudly and before he can retaliate, Derek grabs his wrist and yanks as hard as he can. The knife goes skittering across the floor of the cave but Derek pays it no mind; he uses his momentum to quickly flip their positions over so that the unknown man's back is pressed against the ground, Derek's fingers wrapped tight around his wrists. 

“Now, why shouldn't I kill _you_?” Derek asks. The words have barely left his mouth when he realizes that the cave is actually _glowing_. It can't possibly be the sun, not yet, but it takes him a few moment to realize that the light is coming from below him. There are cyan lines embedded on the man's face, loops and whorls glowing on his cheeks and forehead, continuing down his throat and onto his left arm, growing brighter and brighter with each passing second. The light is so bright that Derek can hardly stand to look at it but when he squints down into the man's face, he manages to get a quick glimpse of an upturned nose, of skin unmarred by wrinkles or age lines. 

“I've seen you before,” he says quietly, leaning away slightly. But before he can say anything else, the man's left wrist throbs burning hot against his fingers and Derek hisses, instinctively releasing his grip on the man's skin. Lightning quick, the young man's hand shoots through the air and slams into Derek's browbone. He feels the skin split open but immediately, Derek realizes that he can't move. The light emanating from the lines on the young man's skin is still bright enough to illuminate the entire cave but it looks... different, somehow. Like Derek is viewing it through a thick fog. The man shoves him off like he weighs nothing and Derek hits the ground, hard. He tries to twitch a toe, a finger, anything, but it's like he's been injected with a horrifically potent drug. The man scrambles to his feet and bolts out of the cave. 

Derek is only paralyzed for a few seconds, but they feel like an absolute eternity. But, as suddenly as it had arrived, the paralysis and the strange fog over his vision disappears and Derek sucks in a massive breath, choking for air. He moves as quick as he can to the mouth of the cave, yanking his battle-hardened revolver from the holster on his hip. 

There's nobody within sight. The only indications of any sort of life are the distant lights of the town and a brief howl from a skag somewhere nearby. The Siren has completely disappeared. Derek sighs and puts his revolver back. 

He think he's done sleeping for the night.

&.

In his pursuit for Argent, Derek gets a little sidetracked. In order to hunt down the murderous warlord, he needs solid information; rumors just won't cut it, would probably get him killed. But, on Pandora, even more so than on other planets, information costs money and as a deserter from the Crimson Lance, he has an income of approximately zero. Money equals information, and jobs equal money.

And that's how he finds himself standing on a ledge above a sandy waste, staring down at the biggest skag he has ever seen in his life. The thing has to be at least triple his own height and is wider than the freighter he'd arrived on. It's covered in hard plates of natural armor, rising into spikes onto its back and the beige skin that is exposed on its legs and stomach is littered with old, ghost-white scars. Even with the distance between them, Derek can smell the thing; the mixed scents of bile and putrefying flesh are nearly enough to make him puke. 

He's been watching it for at least an hour, studying its habits. It moves slowly but Derek has already seen it annihilate two smaller skags that had wandered nearby, rending them to pieces with one swipe of its massive, hook-like claws. Even with his level of patience, he's starting to get antsy but if he doesn't come up with a completely foolproof plan of approach, he knows he's going to end up torn to shreds as well. 

After an additional hour of watching, he thinks he has a plan. But just as he stands up, there's a flash of vivid cerulean light below and the skag simply stops moving, one massive paw still suspended in mid-step. The air is suddenly thick with the sound of bullets and Derek can see a man running towards the still-frozen skag, holding a pair of florescent pistols (one pink, one green) in his hands, firing away. Even from high up, he can smell acid splashing against the skag's armored, scarred skin. 

It's only a few seconds before the skag unfreezes, finishing its step before it unleashes a roar so powerful that Derek can feel the wind riffling his hair. The young man (or rather, the Siren) doesn't appear to be too concerned; when the monster gallops towards him with a surprising amount of speed, he simply keeps firing, diving out of the way just in time. It takes a few seconds for the thing to skid to a stop but that's all it takes; coming out of his roll, the man throws himself back to the side, landing on his back underneath the skag's stomach. More bullets go flying and with a loud screech, the thing wavers on its massive legs before it falls onto its side with a thud. The impact sends a cloud of dust and sand rising into the air and when the haze clears, the Siren is still standing there, guns held limply at his sides, head tilted up towards the sky. 

It's an impressive performance, Derek can't lie. But it was also supposed to be _his_ kill and before he can talk himself out of it, he's hopping off the ledge and sliding down the side of the hill. As he gets closer, he can see smoke rising from where the acid is continuing to eat away at the skag's flesh. The Siren is searching through a pile of bones and green bile, fingers dripping with goo as he pulls out a rusty shotgun and wipes it off with a rag from the back pocket of his pants. 

“Hey!” Derek calls and he looks up, one eyebrow raised. The lines on his skin are still glowing bright blue and Derek can even see light peering through the thick dark hair on his scalp. 

“Oh, it's you again,” he says. “You're welcome.” 

“For _what?_ ” Derek isn't often confused but he feels like the Siren just skipped several sentences in their conversation. 

“For not killing you, back in the cave.” He shrugs and boots another pile of bones, which falls apart to reveal a few clips for a pistol. 

“I'm not here about that,” Derek says. “I was watching that thing for hours. You stole my kill.” 

“I don't see your name on it,” he retorts and Derek swears that he feels a blood vessel pop in his eye. For a few moments, he's tempted to shoot the man in the knee. But he remembers the first time he'd seen a Siren, remembers how the boy's mother had made a man wink out of existence with a mere movement of her fingers. Derek doesn't know if the man standing in front of him possesses that much power; he can't be much older than a teenager, might not have completely matured into his abilities yet. Derek doesn't exactly know how the whole Siren thing works, but he also isn't willing to risk being ripped out of existence so he grits his teeth and resists the urge to reach for one of his guns. 

“I need the money,” he says simply, hating how much it sounds like he's begging. “A guy said he'd pay me five thousand credits if I brought back proof.” 

“Bald guy, look like he's had his nose broke half a dozen times?” Derek nods and the man chuckles, wiping off a clip of ammo and shoving it in his bright green gun. 

“Sorry man. Finders keepers. We all got needs. But...” He trails off and walks away, towards the skag's head. He passes half a dozen piles of bone and bile on the way but he stops at one in particular and gives it a hard kick with his booted foot. Once the skulls and femurs have fallen away, he pulls out a sniper rifle and gives it a brisk shake, sending gunk flying everywhere. It's a muted brown color and doesn't look like anything special but when the man throws it at Derek, his palm glowing blue (which no doubt assists in sending the rifle sailing the more than thirty feet between them), Derek catches it anyways. 

“Call it a consolation prize,” he says dryly and Derek really wants to throw the gun aside and punch the Siren in the face. Instead, he turns on his heel and walks away, back straight. He's only taken a few steps when he hears whistling start up behind him, along with a strange buzzing. 

He only looks back once and is utterly unsurprised to see that the Siren has vanished, along with one of the skag's gargantuan paws.

&.

To say that he has doubts about his so-called consolation prize would be putting it lightly. The thing looks like its been through the grinder and Derek doesn't even know if its worth hauling it back to the closest town to try and sell it. But he decides to try it out anyways, just for the hell of it.

There's a bandit outpost only a few minutes walk away, backed up against one of the tall sandstone pillars that dot the area. Derek hauls himself up onto a ledge a good distance away, crouches down and shoulders the rifle. The instant he gets a grip on it, he can feel his doubts starting to ebb away. The gun feels like it's molded itself to his body; his hands don't shake, not even a little bit and when he twists the scope slightly, the magnification intensifies so that it looks like he's standing right outside the camp. 

But magnification and steadiness mean nothing if the thing isn't powerful enough. So Derek waits until one of the bandits stops his patrol to stare out into the desert, absently scratching at the seat of his pants. Derek takes a deep breath, steadies the crosshairs over the bandit's forehead and presses down on the trigger. 

There's almost no recoil, almost no sound and the bandit's head explodes in a vivid gush of blood. There's a few seconds of surprise and then there are bullets whizzing towards Derek's head, burying themselves in the rocks around him. He ducks down further, waits until there is a brief pause in the shooting, and fires again. This bullet goes straight through a bandit's chest, leaving a ragged hole big enough to see through. 

He kills the rest of the bandits and when he gets back to town, he sells his old rifle. It fetches him enough money to buy some more information and with the remainder, he purchases enough food and ammo to last for at least a week. 

He _doesn't_ make a mental note to thank the Siren the next time he sees him.

&. 

He gets even luckier a few days later. The harsh desert is starting to fall away, ebbing into scrubland that's almost as desolate, but at least has a few more trees for variety. He's been walking for hours, relishing the feeling of dead grass rather than sand underneath his boots, when he comes across an abandoned home. Shack would actually be more of an apt description for it; it's leaning precariously to one side, like it's about to collapse at any moment, and all of the windows have been shattered, leaving sharp fragments of glass in the frames. It isn't much, but his feet are howling with pain and he needs the break, if only to treat the perpetual blisters on the backs of his heels.

There's nothing inside the hut but the splintered remains of a bed and an old lockbox, the red paint nearly stripped away by the elements. Derek doesn't think it'll contain anything of use but he forces the lock open, just in case. 

He hits the jackpot. 

The box is crammed with stuff; the first layer is just rags but underneath that, there's a veritable treasure trove. There's bandages, a few loose revolver rounds, a slightly weather-beaten black jacket that's big enough to throw on over his own Lance issued, bullet-proof jacket. 

Most importantly though, buried at the bottom, is a stack of money. 

He quickly tends to his blisters, wraps some of the rags around his sunburned neck and face, and quickly starts walking again. The next time he finds a station to rent a vehicle, he has more than enough.

&.

The journey gets shorter, but his money isn't infinite. He follows the rumor trail, doing tasks here and there, until he is led to a man who professes to know exactly where Argent has holed himself up. The only problem (other than the fact that the man's stench is enough to make Derek swallow back bile) is that he's more than a little unstable and won't tell Derek _anything_ until Derek clears his junkyard of bandits.

“Do that, and maybe I'll throw you a bone!” the man hollers from his mostly toothless mouth before he slams the viewhole on his door closed. Derek doesn't really feel like doing the task; he's getting tired of being people's errand boy. But without the man, he knows he could spend weeks floundering around the godforsaken planet, trying to find someone else with information and likely getting himself killed in the process. So reluctantly, he readies his guns and steps through the rusted gates of the junkyard. 

He finds the Siren ten minutes later. 

Derek had been assuming that there were only a few bandits hunkered down in the junkyard; sure, the place is _huge_ , a twisted, towering maze of metal spreading as far as he can see and although the bandits don't seem to have a high standard of living (or hygiene, for that matter), Derek doesn't think it's really an environment that many people could live in. 

But he's gone maybe half a mile into the place before he runs across his first encampment, and it is _packed_. There are bandits everywhere, some of them actively patrolling, guns held loosely at their sides, others sitting around one of the numerous fires burning, still others sorting through one of the many lockboxes that dot the area. There are eight huts in the small clearing, all of them made of sheets of metal and although Derek counts sixteen bandits outside, he's sure that there are more lingering inside the huts as well. 

This is a bad idea. This is a very bad idea. 

There's a noise behind him and he whirls around to see the Siren diving out from behind a stack of metal, rolling into a somersault once his hands touch the ground. He lands on his stomach beside Derek and if it weren't for the sound of his chest hitting the ground, it would have been a movement of pure grace. 

“Hey big guy,” he says, reaching for his holster and pulling out his bright green pistol. “I see you still have the rifle.” He's wearing a bright red shirt that previously had long sleeves, although the left one has been torn off to expose the lines and patterns going down his arm. They're glowing a muted yellow today and it kind of makes him look like he has jaundice and Derek can't help but want to laugh. 

Instead, he asks, “what are you doing here?” 

“Information,” the Siren replies, inching his head up until his eyes are above the stack of metal they're both crouched behind. “But I can't get that until I-”

“Clear out the junkyard,” Derek finishes. He's run into the Siren twice more since the skag incident and Derek has slowly become certain that either the Siren is following him or they're both on the same quest, both after the same thing. But now isn't the time to discuss those possibilities, not when one of the bandits is stiffening and turning his head in their direction, like he's heard something despite the low volume of their voices. 

“Huh,” the Siren says. “We'll finish this conversation later.” With that, he pops up and starts firing. One of his bullets slams into the chest of the bandit who had noticed them and as he calls to his comrades, his words trail off into an agonized scream as acid begins to eat through his skin. 

After that, all bets are off. Derek stays back for the most part, rifle on his shoulder, ducking when appropriate. One bullet catches the tip of his ear and he feels blood gushing down the side of his face, but there's no time to deal with the wound at the moment. The Siren is a sight to behold, freezing bandits in their tracks and shooting them, ducking and weaving around the bullets being flung in his direction. 

They've nearly cleared the area when, from the furthest hut, an absolute monster of a man emerges. He has to be eight feet tall, at least, and his shirtless chest is covered in a layer of muscle that goes behind being ripped; it looks plain unnatural. Even from his position, Derek can see the man's veins pressing against his tattooed skin and his bald head. But while that's unsettling enough, it isn't really that concerning when compared to the fact that he's holding an bright orange rocket launcher in his hands. 

“Oh, shit,” Derek hears the Siren say, almost genially, and then he's running, bolting from behind a rusty vehicle towards where Derek is still crouching. He almost doesn't make it; Derek hears the muffled thud and a whizz as the rockets come flying towards them and the Siren throws himself over the pile, landing heavily on his side, head colliding with Derek's ribs. The projectiles passes by mere inches above their heads and smash into another pile of metal a few feet away.

“You know, I have an actual name,” Derek says as he pops up and quickly shoots while the man is loading more rockets into the launcher. He doesn't take the time to aim properly but the bullet still strikes the man in the stomach. The man roars once, sounding more like a skag than a human but he still keeps moving, seemingly unhindered by the blood pouring from the massive bullet hole in his abdomen. 

“Is that so? You gonna tell me it?” he asks. Derek doesn't have time to answer, because the man fires again and the rockets are undoubtedly going to strike true this time. He stands up just long enough to throw himself to the side; the Siren throws himself the other way and although they are both unscathed, the pile of metal they were sheltering behind is completely blown to bits. 

“It's Derek,” he yells, quickly dropping to a crouch and taking a few precious seconds to aim properly. This bullet finds a better home than the last one; it goes through the man's left eye, rendering that side of his face nothing more than a mass of bright red blood and shredded flesh. Amazingly, it still doesn't kill him. While he screams at the top of his lungs, he pulls more rockets from his pocket and presses them into the launcher, yelling obscenities. Derek is all too aware of how exposed he is. The nearest shelter is one of the huts but Derek has a feeling that its thin, sheet metal walls, already pocked with bullet holes and singe marks, would hardly slow the rockets down. 

It's still his best option, but before he can make a move, there's a sudden flash of light searing across his retinas. He blinks rapidly until he can see again and when he looks up, he sees that the man is frozen in place, with the launcher held in front of his chest, midway through completing its journey to his shoulder. The Siren is standing with his legs slightly apart, his arm outstretched, glowing so brightly that Derek can hardly look at him. His head is turned towards Derek and when Derek squints, he can see that his arm is shaking slightly, that his face is tense with exertion. 

“I'm Stiles,” he calls out, managing a lop-sided grin even as his eyes squeeze shut with effort. “Now, please, kill him before I pass out.” 

Derek does exactly that. He fires one more bullet and it goes straight through the man's forehead, sending fragments of bone and flesh through the air. The haze of yellow light surrounding the man flickers and then goes out as Stiles (at least, Derek thinks that's what the Siren had said) drops to his knees, chest heaving. The man falls over onto his back, launcher dropping beside his feet with a clatter and even though he's missing most of his head, Derek still watches him for a few moments, just to make sure that he doesn't get back up. 

He's seen stranger things happen, after all. 

Only when he's completely satisfied that the brute is going to stay down does he go to the Siren, whose skin is looking mighty pale underneath the yellow lines blazing along the surface of his skin. It's obvious that he's exhausted; Derek is feeling mighty tired himself and the side of his face is thick with tacky blood from his ear. But although they've cleared the area out, standing out in the open would be nothing less than complete and utter foolishness. So without waiting for Stiles to talk, Derek hauls him up, slinging his arm around Derek's shoulder. 

“'M fine,” he mutters but the words have hardly left his mouth before his knees sag and he almost goes spilling into the blood-spattered dirt. After that, he acquiesces to Derek holding him up, practically dragging him towards the hut with the lowest number of bullet holes in the walls. The inside is a mess of clothes and rusted guns but there are two cots and Derek drops Stiles on one before he collapses onto the other, his own legs feeling wobbly. The Siren falls onto his back, one leg dangling off the edge of the bed, panting loudly. The cot smells like sweat and brew but for the moment, it'll do. 

They stay like that for a few moments, the silence only broken by the sound of their breathing. Derek's eyes drift closed a few times but he forces them back open; he doesn't think that the wound on his ear is too serious but he wouldn't be the first person in the galaxy to die because they've misjudged an injury. So while Stiles continues to recover, his own eyes closed, Derek forages through the junk on the floor until he finds a shard of glass. It's pretty filthy, even after he tries to wipe it clean on his sleeve, but once he's sacrificed some of his water to clean away the blood around his ear, it's reflective enough to show him the wound. It feels worse than it looks; it seems like it has stopped bleeding already. The tip of his ear is gone, sheared away, but all things considered, he's pretty damn lucky. 

“You said you've seen me before.” Stiles' voice is so low that Derek barely catches it and when he turns, the young man hasn't moved, with the exception of his eyes, which are now open and staring up at the roof of the hut, where thin rays of sunshine are coming through cracks in the metal. “Back in the cave. You said you'd seen me before. Where?” 

“It was a long, long time ago. In a bar,” Derek replies, not taking his eyes off of the shard of glass, daubing away a little more blood before he reaches for his bag. “You were just a baby. You were blue.” 

“It's my favorite color.” Even as he says the words, the lines on his skin shift from florescent yellow to a more muted periwinkle blue. “So you saw my mom too?” Derek nods and Stiles rolls over onto his side, fingers tugging at a seam in the sheets. 

“She's dead,” he says and there's a ripping noise as he tears a hole in the already ragged sheets. He sounds absolutely nothing like the Siren Derek has encountered before; there's no sign of his snappy remarks, of his smart-ass retorts that had made Derek want to punch or shoot him. He sounds young. He sounds _wounded._

“How?” Derek asks, struck by a two-pronged curiosity. Not only is he wondering how Stiles' mom specifically died, but he'd always thought that Sirens were nigh on impossible to kill. He still knows almost nothing about them, just what his mom had told him and the exaggerated tales that had circulated through the Lance. Stiles swallows heavily and lowers his gaze to the floor. 

“I was eleven,” he starts, his voice a low, even murmur. “We were outnumbered, got kidnapped, by this guy named Argent.” Derek can't help the breath he sucks in at the very mention of the bastard's name. Stiles looks at him questioningly and he nods, waving his hand slightly. 

“After. I'll tell you after..” 

“Okay,” Stiles says and he's silent for a few moments, like he's trying to summon the words again. “He... he was sick. Like, really physically sick and he had some weird idea that Mom could heal him. She said she couldn't, but I didn't really believe her. Neither did he.” He stops again, face growing even more pale and Derek recognizes that look too well; it's the look of a boy who is reliving the sound of his mother's screams. 

“Either she wouldn't help him or she couldn't, but one day, he told her they were going to see if I could do it. And that night, she hugged me, said she loved me and told me to run when it was time. The next time a guard came to take her away, she just exploded. Took him with her, took half the compound with her. But she didn't take me.” 

“What did you do?” Derek asks, hands clutching a bandage that he has yet to slap over his ear. Stiles shrugs and furiously wipes at his face, smearing a tear across his glowing cheekbone. 

“I ran. I wanted to make sure he was dead but I ran instead, because that's what she told me to do. Bounced around for a long time, didn't hear anything about the bastard. I figured he'd died. But then I heard different and came back.” He sighs loudly, visibly sagging on the cot, wiping at his face again. Derek swallows heavily, finally presses the bandage to his wound, tapes it there. It gives him enough time for him to gather up words of his own, words that he hasn't spoken to anyone in nearly a decade. 

“My mom too,” he says, digging his fingers into his leg. “And my dad. And my sister, Laura. I was there.” 

“How?” Stiles asks in a hushed voice. He sits up slowly, a wince quickly passing over his face, swinging his legs over the edge of the cot until his feet are flat on the ground. The beds are so close together that their knees are almost touching but Derek doesn't try to swivel away. 

“Execution,” he says and getting the word out of his mouth is like sticking glass in his tongue. “Mom and Dad were trying to take down this mining operation he had. Laura was the oldest, so she went with them. And they... they got caught. My younger sister and I were back in camp and Argent brought them to us. We hid, but he didn't want to kill us. He just wanted us to watch.” It's been over a decade but he can still remember the day with absolute clarity. He can practically taste the memories in his mouth, thick and rotten and he swallows around the horrible taste. 

“I got us away,” he says, hardly able to finish the tale. “Got us off Pandora. We had an uncle on Eden-6. He was an asshole, still is, but he said he'd take care of Cora.” 

“And you joined the Crimson Lance,” Stiles finishes, lightly tapping his foot off of Derek's boot, where the Lance's insignia is still visible. Derek nods, glad that Stiles was able to figure out how his story ended, because his throat feels like it has swollen closed. 

“You know, we're both gonna keep meeting like this,” Stiles says after a moment. There's levity in his tone but it's definitely artificial. “We want the same thing. Why don't we go after it together?” Derek looks up and inadvertently locks eyes with Stiles. 

“Together?” he repeats, palms pressing into his knees. Pandora has never really been a planet for people to work together; the mindset of every man for himself has always dominated. 

“Yeah. For them. For our moms,” Stiles says softly, but his skin is blazing so bright that Derek can feel himself squinting. In the back of his mind, he hears his mother's firm, yet gentle voice, hears it just as clear as he had when he was five years old and clinging to her back. 

_You should never trust a Siren._

He has no intentions on disavowing her advice, not just yet. But Stiles has a point. So Derek nods and sticks his hand out. 

“Okay,” he says and Stiles smiles grimly as he grasps Derek's hand with his glowing fingers. 

Derek isn't sure if he imagines it, but for a fraction of a second, as their palms brush together, he thinks that Stiles glows just a little brighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since I have already completed this story and just need to edit it, it shouldn't take me too long to post the other chapters. (:
> 
> as always, I can be found on [tumblr.](http://banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com/) :)


	2. oasis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to everyone: you're all awesome. I haven't yet decided if I want to split the last part of this into two chapters or keep it as one 12,000 word entry but either way, there's at least one part left. thank you all for reading!

They stay in the hut for awhile longer, mostly in silence, continuing to catch their breath. Stiles has a tiny jar of pain pills in his bag and although the ache in his ear is now a manageable dull throb, Derek takes one anyways. They're just in the process of packing up when Derek hears voices approaching. When he pokes his head out of the hut, he sees four bandits coming down the path, all engaged in some profanity-laden conversation. One of them is holding a bottle of brew and none of them seem to have noticed the bodies scattered around the clearing yet. 

None of them have a rocket launcher either and as a result, taking them out is almost child's play. 

It takes him and Stiles hours to clear out the junkyard. Thankfully, most of the bandits aren't on their A-game; many of them are so drunk that they can't even stand up before there's a bullet going through their head or chest. By the time they've reached what Derek suspects is the last encampment, he's exhausted and his stomach is aching for food. While they're covered in cuts and bruises and there's a shallow gash on Stiles' forearm from where a bullet had grazed him, both of them have managed to avoid any more serious injuries. 

The sun is hovering low in the sky and although Derek is tired enough to fall asleep in one of the little scrap-metal huts, he wants to be out of the damn junkyard first. Stiles appears to think the same thing; while he bends at the waist, hands grasping his knees, gasping for breath, he doesn't sit down or ask to stop for a few minutes. After he's sucked in a few deep lungfuls of air, he nods and Derek starts leading the way out, carefully watching to make sure Stiles' knees don't abruptly give out. 

He _does_ fall over, but it isn't from exhaustion. There's one area where the path completely disappears, covered over with a heap of metal that, at some point in the past, had slid like an avalanche from a nearby pile. Getting over it the first time hadn't been difficult and for the most part, neither is the second time. But when they're descending down the other side of it, all it takes is one wrong step for the whole thing to shift. It's just slightly, but it's still enough to make Stiles lose his footing and fall. His feet slip out from underneath him and, cursing loudly, he hits the ground with a loud thud, landing square on his back. 

At first, Derek thinks he's made it out okay. But then Stiles shifts slightly and the sun glints off of the jagged piece of metal sticking out of his thigh. Although he's groaning quietly, Derek doesn't think he's noticed the piece yet and he tries to move faster, hopping down the slope of metal as quickly as he dares. 

He gets there too late. One of Stiles' hands brushes over the metal and his entire body freezes, like he's managed to paralyze himself. His skin goes pale (even the blue lines coursing over his skin turn white) and when he tips his head back against the dirt, the tendons in his neck are pulled tight as springs. He's about to scream and Derek leaps the last few feet to the ground. His boots have hardly touched the earth before he slides to his knees and slams his hand over Stiles' mouth, just barely managing to muffle his scream. Even if they've killed all of the bandits in the place, Derek is sure there are other things prowling through the metal, things that aren't human, things that could easily kill them in their exhausted state. So he only removes his hand when he's sure that Stiles is done screaming and he tries not to notice how clammy the younger man's skin is. 

“You can't scream,” Derek says and to his surprise, Stiles nods rapidly, the whorls and lines barely visible on his ashen face. 

“I know,” he groans, shifting slightly. That simple movement must be enough to send more bolts of pain through his body because although he doesn't scream, he bites down on his lip so hard that blood spurts onto his chin and he slams his palm into the ground.

When he pulls it back, he leaves behind a smoking crater in the shape of his hand. 

“I can fix it,” he says quietly, beads of sweat rolling from his hairline. Derek stops rummaging through his bag for bandages and looks at him, trying to ignore the heavy stone that has settled into his stomach. 

“How?” 

“I can cauterize it.” Stiles' amber eyes and his dark hair are the only parts of him that seem to have any color left. “If you take it out, I can cauterize it. It'll stop the bleeding, help it heal.” 

Derek won't lie, it sounds like a pretty bad idea. He doesn't know if Stiles is in complete control of his powers while he's in the right state of mind, let alone when he's ghost-white from agony. But it's also the only real idea he has; while he has bandages and some other medical supplies, he doesn't have anything that could stitch up a wound as bad as the one on Stiles' leg and mere bandages alone won't keep him from bleeding to death. So, he sets his bag aside for the moment and moves so that he's kneeling over Stiles' leg, one hand grasping the jagged piece of metal. The leg of Stiles' tan pants is absolutely sodden with blood and when Derek brushes over the wet fabric with his hands, his fingertips come back bright red. 

“Are you ready?” he asks quietly, tightening his grip. In response, Stiles sticks the side of his hand into his mouth and bites down before he nods and as soon as he provides the affirmation, Derek yanks _hard._ The metal comes out with a horrific squelch and a fresh torrent of blood flows over his hands. But Stiles doesn't scream; his face is absolutely drenched with sweat and his fingers are clawing at the dirt but he doesn't scream. Derek tosses the blood-soaked metal aside and moves back slightly, giving Stiles enough room to reach the wound. 

For a few moments, he doesn't move; he stays on his back, chest heaving, his eyes staring up at the cloudless sky and Derek is convinced that Stiles is going to faint. When he does sit up, his hands are (unsurprisingly) shaking and Derek has a feeling that if he doesn't do something to help, Stiles is just going to end up burning himself and causing another injury, one that may just prove fatal. 

He doesn't know where the impulse comes from. Even later, when they're hunkered down in a cave, with Stiles asleep around the low fire they've made, Derek can't figure out why he decided to grab Stiles' non-glowing hand, gripping it tightly. For a few long seconds, Stiles looks at him and underneath his pallid skin, Derek can see confusion and more than a hint of absolute fear. 

But then, Stiles' mouth firms into a line and, gripping Derek's hand hard enough to leave bruises, blue light starts to glow in the spaces between Stiles' fingertips. Taking a deep breath, he gently presses his fingers to the bottom of his wound. The air fills with the awful smell of seared flesh (you don't get used to that, not ever) and Stiles hisses through his teeth, his eyes wide, skin pulled tight on his face. 

But he still doesn't scream. His eyes don't close and he doesn't let go of Derek's hand, not until he finally reaches the top of the wound, searing it closed. His entire body sags after that; his fingers go loose and slip from between Derek's as he drops backwards, his head thudding against the ground. 

“Holy fuck,” he whispers, his eyes finally falling closed. Derek doesn't have anything else to add; when he'd been serving with the Lance, he'd seen many men faint or nearly throw up if they got so much as a nosebleed. He'd seen some who would have rather have their legs cut off than cauterized. 

He's only truly been acquainted with the man for a few hours, but Derek thinks Stiles is easily one of the bravest people he's ever met. 

“Can you walk?” he asks, getting back to his feet and holding out his hand to help Stiles up. 

“I'm sure I'll be fine.” He gets to his feet with only a little effort but he's hardly put any weight on his leg before it's buckling, sending him sprawling back to the ground and although that stone in Derek's stomach gets a little bit heavier, he can't help but roll his eyes. 

Serves the man right for being a smartass. 

“Okay. I might have lied.”

&. 

Together, they manage to get Stiles back to his feet and they limp along, Derek constantly on the watch for any skags or spiderants that might come crashing out of the metal mountains around them. But amazingly, although the sun has nearly disappeared when they come out, they finally make it back to where the crazy owner of the junkyard is hunkered down in his concrete box of a home. Derek pounds on the metal door of the building and the viewhole slides open, revealing a pair of dull gray eyes and a crooked nose covered in filthy bandages.

“What do you want?” 

“We cleaned out the junkyard,” Derek says, glancing at Stiles. “Now tell us where Argent is.” 

“I've got something else I need ya to do first,” the man growls and the stench coming through the viewhole is even worse than before. “Got some-”

“ _Earl_ ,” Stiles interrupts and when Derek looks down, there's pale blue light flashing between Stiles' fingertips. “If you don't tell us now, you'll wish the bandits had killed you.” There's a strange echoing quality to his voice, like there's two of him speaking in sync, and it sends a shiver down Derek's spine, sends goosebumps up the arm that is still supporting Stiles around his waist. 

“You can't hurt me,” Earl says in return but Derek can detect the waver in his words. Stiles doesn't answer; he simply reaches forward and presses his glowing palm to the metal door. Only seconds later, Earl starts babbling away, sobs and curse words and pleas mixing together. When Stiles pulls his hand away, he's burned right through the door and Derek can see Earl's stomach on the other side. 

“Alright alright, I'll tell you,” he wails, bawling like a newborn and it's so pitiful that Derek can't help but wince. 

They find out that Argent moves around fairly often but for the last while, he's been firmly settled into a safehouse in the Arid Hills. It's an area Derek remembers well, an area his mother and father had memorized like the back of their hands, and he suspects he knows exactly what safehouse Earl is talking about. The area is at least a day's drive away and although his brain wants nothing more than to start the journey immediately, sleep be damned, his body is an entirely different story. It's been a long, exhausting day and he's just about ready to doze on his feet. 

He manages to drag Stiles away (“C'mon Derek, just a quick zap, just to teach him a lesson”) and although the younger man seems to be having a slightly easier time walking, he keeps his arm slung around Derek's shoulders. They don't go too far outside of the junkyard; Derek drives as far as the nearest cave before he stops, parking the vehicle in front of the entrance so that they have some semblance of protection. The cave is cool and dry and once they've made sure that it isn't already occupied by any number of creatures, Derek gathers some dry grass from outside and lights a small fire. 

“Thank you,” Stiles says after they've eaten some of Derek's military rations in silence. He's lying on a ratty blanket from his backpack, injured leg stretched out, the lines on his skin almost the same color of orange as the flames dancing beside him. 

“No 'you're welcome' first?” Derek asks and for a few seconds, Stiles' face is a mask of confusion. But then, there's a spark of recognition and he grins, turning his head so that he's looking at Derek across the fire. 

“Nah, not this time. I don't need to be an asshole to you anymore. You saved my life.” 

“You wouldn't have died.” Sure, Derek still may not know much about Sirens, but he's positive that it would take more than a stab in the leg to kill one of them. If not, they aren't nearly as mythical as they're made out to be. 

“Maybe not from that,” Stiles says, sitting up and bringing his uninjured leg towards his chest. “But _you_ could have killed me. Easily.” 

“Why would I have done that?” Derek asks quietly. The look Stiles sends him across the dim fire, the light of the flames splaying over his cheekbones, is absolutely devastating and the stone in Derek's stomach starts to weigh a little more. 

“Because people like having rare things,” he says. “And the best way to keep someone else from having that rare thing is to kill it.” 

It's only two sentences but it looks like saying them has absolutely drained Stiles, like he's finally confronted a truth he's been hiding from for years. The orange lines on his skin bleed back to blue and after a moment, he lies back down, pulling his blanket over himself, head pillowed on his rucksack. He's out in only a few minutes and although Derek doesn't think it's necessary for him to stay up and keep watch, sleep doesn't come to him for a very, very long time.

&.

What sleep Derek does get is plagued by bad dreams, dreams that look almost identical to memories. When he finally manages to pull himself out of these dreams (or rather, nightmares), he's covered in sweat, the fire has long since burned out and warm sunlight is shining into the cave around the outline of their vehicle. Stiles is sitting on the other side of the coals, his blanket already packed away, eating one of Derek's bland military rations.

“Sorry,” he says, shrugging sheepishly. “I was really hungry and I didn't wanna wake you up.” 

_You should never trust a Siren._

Derek wills away his mother's words and quickly searches through his backpack, not trying to be inconspicuous about it. But aside from the one package of food, nothing else has been disturbed or removed. 

“Sorry,” Derek says. “Just... you know.” He tries his best to send a reassuring smile across the ashes of the fire but the action is so unfamiliar that he is fairly certain he more grimaces than anything. Still, Stiles seems to get what he's trying to convey and he shoots back a quick smile that brightens his face in a way Derek doesn't think he should be noticing. 

When it comes time to leave, Stiles yells “Shotgun!” and clambers up the side of the runner into the gunner seat, which is located above and behind the driver's seat. His leg appears to be doing a little better; it's only dragging slightly. Derek doesn't bother protesting; he's always preferred driving anyways. They have a long journey ahead of them, one Derek doesn't believe they'll be able to complete in one stretch, not if they want to stay awake and alert. 

The first few hours are uneventful. The land changes very little; there's really only a few more trees and some more steep bluffs that have been whipped by the wind. For the first little while, he can hear Stiles' voice behind him, but the wind is too strong for him to pick out any specific words and eventually, he stops talking. 

At least, that is until his voice is right beside Derek's ear. 

“ _Derek._ ” 

Derek steadfastly does _not_ almost run the vehicle off the rutted road into the ditch. The road curves slightly up ahead but once it's returned to a straight line, he risks a glance sideways, slowing down slightly. Stiles is practically hanging out of the gunner seat, one hand holding onto the metal beside Derek's head. It looks like one hell of a precarious position but he seems fairly unconcerned about the danger involved, even though it appears like his legs are the only part of his body still in the cockpit. 

“What?” he manages to ask. Stiles' face is practically pressed against his; if Derek shifted even slightly, his cheek would be brushing over Stiles' upturned nose. 

“There's a pond over there,” he says, pointing into the distance. When Derek turns and looks, he can just barely make out a smudge of light blue on the horizon, can see the sun glinting off a small body of water. It's been so long since he's seen fresh water that he can't help but blink in amazement. It's an anomaly and part of him is convinced that it _has_ to be a mirage. 

“Mind if we make a pit stop?” Stiles asks and although he does pull back slightly when Derek turns his head, it isn't far enough to keep his mouth from grazing over Derek's cheek.

Derek doesn't answer. He simply yanks the wheel hard to the left; maybe a little too hard, judging on how Stiles suddenly whoops and slams his hands into Derek's shoulders, fingers scrabbling over his jacket. But even once they've stabilized a bit, he doesn't wriggle back into the gunner seat. He stays draped on the runner like a bug they've squashed, hands gripping Derek's shoulders and his upper arms like he's the only thing keeping him from flying out. 

Derek has a feeling his Siren powers are also making it easier for him to stay in the improbable position, but he doesn't dare move away from Stiles' hands just to try and verify that nudge. 

They bounce across the uneven land for a few minutes, kicking up sand and dirt, before they arrive at the water. It's a small pond and despite the heat of the area, it seems to be thriving (by Pandora's standards, at least). There are a few thin trees growing close to the shore, just stunted things with hardly any leaves, but it's better than what Derek has seen alongside the road. There's a small hut nearby, with a dock that abuts onto the water, but it doesn't appear like there's been anyone living there for quite some time. 

Derek parks the runner close by and hops out; Stiles, on the other hand, practically rolls off of the thing, landing on his feet nimble as a cat, injured leg be damned. He jogs down to the edge of the dock, drops his backpack and, without further adieu, shrugs his jacket off and reaches for the bottom of his shirt. 

“What are you doing?” Derek asks, taking one step out onto the dock, not liking the way the wood seems to buckle slightly underneath his boots. 

“Swimming,” Stiles replies. The word is muffled by his shirt as he pulls it over his head and any response Derek may have had instantly disappears once he gets a good glimpse at Stiles' back. The ridge of his spine serves as a perfect divider, bisecting his back into lined and unlined. The designs on his back (which are currently their default periwinkle blue) are a complex masterpiece of swirls and spirals and without any warning, Derek wonders what it would feel like to trace those lines with his fingertips, wonders if he'd be able to feel them change colors. While the other side of Stiles' back is mere skin, it's far from plain; rather, it's dotted with an array of stark white scars and dark moles. Derek is nearly bowled over by how much he wants to touch those marks as well, how much he wants to touch _Stiles._

“Aren't you coming?” When Stiles turns around, midway through the process of kicking off his boots, the _want_ grows even stronger. Derek isn't surprised that Stiles' chest is well-defined, overlaid with more lines and whorls that disappear underneath his pants (along with a thin trail of dark hair), but that doesn't mean looking away from the sight is any easier. Stiles doesn't seem to notice anything amiss, based on how he simply quirks up an eyebrow and grins. 

“I...” As much as Derek is afraid, afraid of the emotions that have essentially blind-sided him, sheer practicality wins out over his fear. After all, it's been awhile since he could take the time to actually get clean and his clothes could go for a wash as well. So, while Stiles dives off the dock, still wearing his blood soaked pants, Derek starts shedding his multiple layers. His guns go on the shore, away from the pond, but he dips his clothes in the water as he removes them, laying them out on the dock to dry. Finally, he's down to his pants and after emptying his pockets, he slides off the edge of the dock into the azure water. 

The pond is surprisingly cool and fairly deep and Derek stays underwater until his lungs ache. When he pops back up, Stiles is nearby, floating on his back, looking up at the sky. 

“Hard to believe a place like this exists on Pandora,” he says. 

“Yeah. It's nice.” Derek drops back underwater and scrubs his fingers through his hair, wishing that he had some good shampoo. That was one thing he hadn't taken from the Lance when he'd left.

They stay in the water for at least an hour, and even though it's just a temporary reprieve from their (potentially fatal) journey, Derek thinks it is the most peaceful moment he's had in years. Derek asks Stiles about the Sirens, about what parts of the legends are true; yes, there are only six in the universe at any given time, and yes, they heal faster than normal humans (which explains why Stiles seems to be walking with a fair amount of ease), but no, Stiles has no idea where they originally came from. 

In return, Stiles asks him about Eden-6, about the other planets he'd visited during his tours of duty and although Derek keeps one eye and ear turned towards their surroundings, he mainly just talks and as far as he can tell, Stiles listens. He does occasionally reel off a smart-ass remark but the edge is gone to them and rather than making him want to shoot Stiles in the knee, now Derek is content to just roll his eyes. 

Once Derek's clothes are (mostly) dry, they resume their journey. Derek loses track of how long they drive for; after awhile, he switches spots with Stiles and immediately regrets it. The man is a reckless driver, taking curves like he's trying to flip them, usually only gripping the steering wheel with one hand, his other one tapping out a beat against the side of the runner. 

Derek simply stares out at the landscape and tries his best to ignore the waves of queasiness that occasionally come over him. 

That night, they make camp in an abandoned bandit outpost. Derek has a feeling the place hasn't been empty for too long; the stench of blood is still present in the air and there are visible drag marks on the ground, like some particularly hungry skags came hunting for a meal. But still, it's surrounded by a fence (albeit a rudimentary one) and Derek manages to finagle the runner so that it's mostly blocking the only gate. 

It may not be a fool proof shelter, but it's an acceptable one. 

The huts here are slightly sturdier than the ones in the junkyard and feature far fewer bullet holes. Although there are half a dozen to pick from, Stiles follows Derek into the one furthest away from the gate and Derek thinks nothing of it. It's only been a little over one day since they made a deal and shook on it, but the thought of Stiles sleeping in another hut just seems strange, not to mention dangerous. 

As always, the night is cool, but they don't make a fire; there's a heavy cloth pinned above the door and when they release it, it manages to keep out most of the wind. They aren't lucky enough to have cots, but Derek has slept on far worse surfaces in his time. 

“I'll take first watch,” he says after they've eaten. The hut is lit only by Stiles' skin, which is currently glowing turquoise. 

“Derek, wait.” Derek has hardly shifted from his spot when Stiles grabs his wrist. Derek freezes just as effectively as if he'd been paralyzed. 

“I don't think we need to take watch. Not tonight,” he says and Derek suddenly becomes aware that he can feel Stiles' knee brushing against his own. What Stiles is saying should go against every fiber of his being; he's spent so long being alert, obsessively paying attention to his surroundings, that the thought of relaxing is downright strange. 

But although he knows what he _should_ feel like, the truth is that his normal feelings of caution and hyper-vigilance are nearly non-existent. He doesn't know if it's because of Stiles' reassuring, low voice, or the glow from his skin, or the way his thumb is definitely dragging back and forth over Derek's pulse. 

Maybe it's none of those things. Maybe it's all of them. 

Maybe it doesn't matter. 

“Okay,” he says, reluctantly pulling his wrist back from Stiles' grasp. “We should sleep then. Big day tomorrow.”


	3. black as pitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I did decide to split the final part into two, just because 12,000 words is pretty darn long. thank you to everyone for the feedback, you're all awesome. (:

The big day doesn't actually occur for another forty-eight hours. They do make it into the Arid Hills the next day, but the area is worse off than Derek had recalled. The towering windmills that he had remembered, which had served as a slightly unreliable power grid, are still standing but many of them have lost parts, the massive blades sticking out of the ground at their bases. 

The buildings are even worse; the small shacks and former bandit camps are being taken back by the land, knocked over by the harsh winds, or reclaimed by skags and hideous, screeching rakks, massive birds with sharp talons and mouths filled with razor sharp barbs instead of teeth. The runner gives up the ghost almost immediately and although Derek tries his best to fix the damn thing, its engine is too clogged with sand for his efforts to be of any use. 

So they spend the next day walking in near-silence, resting when there's shade, beating back the creatures who come bounding over the hills or swooping out of the sky. But even though he spends most of his time watching for the next attack, Derek spends a lot of time watching Stiles as well. There's no coming back from his revelation, he knows that; when they reach their target, he'll be able to put it in the back of his mind, for the sake of killing Argent, but he doesn't think that he'll ever be able to completely ignore or forget it. His eyes catch on Stiles' fingertips as energy arcs between them, on the shifting colors on his arm, on the way his teeth latch onto his bottom lip every so often. 

He tries his best to ignore it, he really does; not just for the sake of completing the mission, but for the sake of what will come afterward, when they will have fulfilled the requirements of their tentative partnership and inevitably part ways.

&. 

Finally, just after sunset on the second day, they reach the safehouse. The compound itself is actually out of sight, built straight into the side of a mountain that drops off into a sheer cliff. But surrounding that compound is a ramshackle collection of huts and wobbly buildings, littered with signs that say _keep out_ in dripping red letters.

The fact that the word keep is spelled wrong makes Derek feel a little better about their chances, but not by much. 

“We should go now,” Stiles whispers. They're lying on their stomachs on the crest of a hill, dead grass brushing against their chins. Stiles is pressed against Derek's side from shoulder to hip and Derek can feel the younger man vibrating with nervous energy. His markings are still blue but they've shifted shades slightly, morphing into a midnight blue that blends into the lengthening shadows of twilight better than cyan would.

“We should kill the bastard now, in case he leaves tonight,” he hisses, his fingernails digging into the ground. Derek isn't surprised that he can smell something burning, that there are thin streams of smoke rising from the dirt. He understands Stiles' hurry, understands it from the very depths of his soul. But even though it's getting harder and harder to push his family's faces out of his mind, running in gung-ho won't help either of them. Frankly, it would probably get them fucking killed and Derek has not come this far to end up with a bullet hole in his head, courtesy of the one person in the galaxy he hates more than anyone. 

“No,” he replies and after only a second of consideration, he reaches out and lays his hand over Stiles'. His hand is uncomfortably warm, even through the gloves Derek is wearing, but he doesn't move. 

“We need to wait. It's still too bright out,” Derek says quietly, glancing over towards the compound. There's a sniper sitting on the edge of a wobbly platform attached to the side of the mountain and although Derek suspects that he's drunk (based on his slight sway and the glass bottles surrounding him), all it would take is one word to carry for him to notice them. “We'll go get some sleep, come back when it's completely dark. It'll be safer.”

Derek can hear Stiles swallow, can hear the ground still sizzling and then, Stiles turns his hand over so that their palms and fingers are locked together. He squeezes hard and nods, his head bowed so low that his nose nearly brushes the ground. 

“Okay,” he murmurs. “Let's wait.” They slowly slink back down the hill on their stomachs and even once they stand up, Stiles doesn't let go of Derek's hand. He keeps grasping it until they've retreated to the base of a crag that is separated from the camp by a few round hills. There's a pile of loose boulders at the base and once they're behind them, they're fairly well shielded from both the elements and (hopefully) from any creature that might pass by. Derek settles down with his back against one of the rocks, legs stretched out in front of him and for a few moments, Stiles continues to stand, staring back over his shoulder, his face impossible to read. 

“Stiles,” Derek says firmly and just like that, Stiles comes back from whatever place he'd gone. He drops down as well and before Derek can shift or move, he's slotting himself against Derek's side and reaching for his hand again. Much as he tries, Derek knows there's no hiding his eagerness as he grasps Stiles' hand. 

“Thanks,” Stiles says, his head pressed more against Derek's shoulder than the rock behind them. 

“No 'you're welcome' first?” Derek asks, the joke the only words he trusts to push past his lips. Stiles chuckles quietly and he rubs his head against Derek's shoulder like a cat.

“Nah. I think we're way past that now,” he replies and his voice is so soft, so much of a contrast to the raw power coursing beneath his skin, that it's all Derek can do to not turn his head, brush his fingers underneath Stiles' chin and use them to tilt his head upward. 

After. After their battle, if they survive, if Stiles will let him, Derek intends to do just that. But before that, before anything else, he needs a little bit of sleep and even though there are nerves churning rampantly in his guts, he falls asleep with ease.

&. 

He wakes up to the sound of screams.

At first he's certain that they're just remnants, bits of a dream he hasn't quite managed to shake yet. But then, he realizes that his hand is disconcertingly cold, that something in the very air itself feels off. Rapidly blinking away the last vestiges of sleep, he turns his head, just as another agonized scream breaks through the air. 

Stiles is gone. 

Derek doesn't think he's ever moved as fast in his life. As soon as he gets his feet underneath him, he's up and running, racing towards the encampment, feet scrambling for purchase on loose earth. The tortured screams keep coming and Derek can see flashes of blue light in the distance. There are scattered gunshots and one bullet goes whizzing into the ground at his feet. He sees that it's from the sniper standing on the platform and, skidding to a stop, Derek pulls his rifle off his back and quickly aims. It's too dark to truly tell where the bullet hits, but the man's body tumbles off the edge of the platform, limp as one of the rag dolls Cora had played with when she had been a baby. 

“Stiles!” he yells, shouldering the rifle again in favor of his revolver. “ _Stiles!_ ” He rounds the corner, passing through the entrance to the camp and stops, eyes quickly scanning the scene. Stiles is standing in the middle of the area, glowing so brightly that it's like morning all over again. The air is thick with the smell of acid and something else, something more like ozone than anything, like the air after a close lightning strike. The area seems to be clear of gunmen for the time being but there are more bandits running down the hill, shirtless with machetes in their hands, screaming cannibalistic threats. 

Stiles doesn't seem concerned in the least. He stands his ground and when the first bandit is nearly close enough to touch, he thrusts his arm out, palm first. The entire group of men go flying like they've been flicked by a giant finger, slamming into the side of a hut with a wet _thud._ There are some quiet groans from them before they fall silent, nothing more than a bloody heap of flesh. 

“Stiles!” Derek yells again and this time, Stiles spins on his heel, chest heaving, shoulders sagging. 

“I'm sorry,” he pants, hands loosely clenched at his sides. “I tried to wait, Derek. But I couldn't.” 

“You should have woken me up! You could have gotten yourself killed!” Derek knows that the probability of Stiles actually dying isn't very high but he doesn't trust probability, doesn't trust the Siren to not be reckless. All it would take would be for him to miss one bandit hiding in a hut, one bandit who managed to get a shot off, a shot that went true.

The very thought makes Derek swallow back bile. 

“But I didn't!” Stiles protests, grinning from ear to ear, looking borderline deranged. Derek doesn't know whether he wants to kiss or kill him. 

“What?” 

Oh no. It's not often that the filter between Derek's brain and his mouth sputters but of all the times for it to happen, it has to be now. 

“You mean that?” Stiles asks, taking a step forward and there's no imagining it this time; he's started to glow even brighter. 

“Which part?” Stiles rolls his eyes and the grin on his face seems less deranged now and more like the genuine item. 

“Both, I guess, but I'm more interested in the kissing part.” He's nearly toe to toe with Derek now and Derek can feel the nearly-oppressive heat rolling off of him. 

“Yeah,” Derek says, just barely stifling a groan because he knows this is the very definition of stupid. Stiles has just proven to him that his mother's warning, said so many years ago, is still valid, and yet here he is. He knows that he can't trust the Siren, not completely at least, but he isn't telling him to move away. Rather, he wants Stiles to step closer, wants him to keep moving forward until there's no space between them and he can feel that overwhelming heat pressed against his own skin. 

“Yeah, I do,” he says again. 

“Wow,” Stiles murmurs quietly and his glowing hand reaches out and Derek takes it. While the heat is just on this side of uncomfortable, Derek relishes it. “Thank God.” He squeezes once before he drops Derek's hand and takes a step back, running his hand through his already messy hair. 

“We are definitely talking about this. Afterwards. I promise.” Derek nods once and inclines his head towards the safehouse door, looming at the top of the hill, the last true barrier between them and Argent. 

“Afterwards,” he agrees. “But let's end this first.”

&. 

The door to the safehouse doesn't open with any conventional key; rather, there's a palm-shaped groove in the center of the door, black with grime and dirt from the hands of the numerous bandits who have touched it. Still, Derek is certain that, if Stiles put his hand into the groove, he could probably use his powers to force it open.

Instead, Stiles reaches down, pulls a knife out of his boot and briefly heads back down the hill. When he comes back, he's holding a disembodied hand, a white knob of bone peeking out of the wrist. When Stiles presses it into the lock, a deep rumble immediately fills the air and a crack appears down the middle of the door as each half slides back into the mountain. Stiles doesn't waste any time; as soon as the crack is large enough for him to fit through, he strides into the safe house. His green pistol is holstered now; instead, he's holding the florescent pink one in his hands and as Derek steps over the threshold as well, he hears Stiles murmur two words, his thumb brushing over the pistol's scorched side. 

“For mom.” Derek takes a moment, stops and closes his eyes. He recalls the last happy memory of his mother he has; it'd been mere hours before he'd watched her die, right before she'd left for the mine with his father. 

_”You're getting awfully old,”_ she'd teased, poking him in the side as she adjusted her hip holster. _“Am I gonna get any grandbabies soon?”_ It'd been good-natured fun but Derek had been fifteen and rife with teenage sullenness, so his only response had been a roll of the eyes and a _yeah, love you Mom._

“For mom,” he echoes.

&. 

Derek has been in a lot of disgusting places in his relatively short life. Pandora isn't exactly known for its cleanliness; hell, even some of the barracks he'd stayed in while with the Lance had been downright abhorrent, covered in gun grease and inches of dirt.

Argent's safehouse puts them all to shame. 

The smell hits Derek almost as soon as he's stepped into the shadows past the doorway and he has to swallow three times in a row just to keep from throwing up. The first room, which contains nothing more than two battered vending machines with faded paint jobs, is absolutely _caked_ in filth. There are streaks of blood reaching all the way to the ceiling and there are lumpy red chunks of gore sitting at Derek's boots. Despite all this, there's only one body and it looks like it's been decomposing for awhile; it's sitting in the corner of the room, chin touching its chest, the flesh peeling away from its bones. 

It smells like blood and gunpower and piss, but most of all, it smells like agony and death. 

“Apparently it's the maid's day off,” Stiles says and Derek can't help but shoot him a glance, one eyebrow raised to say _really?_ The Siren shrugs again, his face plastered with that trademark grin but even with the lack of light, the glowing marks on Stiles' skin provide enough illumination for Derek to see that the smile doesn't come close to reaching Stiles' eyes. 

“Was the other place like this?” Derek asks, drawing his rifle from his back. “Was it so...”

“Gross? No, not at all,” Stiles replies, his voice hardly above a murmur as he makes his way towards the door leading further into the complex. “I mean, it was 'bout as clean as you can expect bandits to be. This... this isn't like anything I've ever seen.” Derek tracks his throat as it bobs up and down and he has a suspicion that Stiles is trying not to throw up as well. 

The next room is no better. It's a little less dim, but only slightly; the only illumination (apart from Stiles) is coming from a pair of bulbs, hanging from the ceiling on frayed wires that look about ready to snap at any moment. It's mainly empty of decoration, aside from a few chairs and tables, most of which are either shattered or on their last legs. There's a literal trail of blood on the floor, leading through another door at the opposite end of the room and when Derek presses the toe of his boot into it, it comes back smeared with red.

It takes five more minutes of passing through rooms, following the blood trail, before they come across someone alive. They've reached a dormitory, packed full of wobbly metal bunk beds and storage lockers and just before he sees a bandit pops around the doorframe, Derek feels something in the air shift slightly, like a little bit of the oxygen in the room has been sucked out. 

But before he can even bring his rifle up, Stiles is lashing out with his hand, like he's trying to push something through thin air. It seems to Derek like he can actually see the air _ripple_ before it smashes into the bandit.

The result is... unexpected, to say the least. Derek figures that the man will slam into the wall behind him, might get knocked out or break a few bones.

Instead, he _disintegrates._ For a few moments, he stands stock-still and Derek thinks that maybe Stiles has just paralyzed him, is waiting for Derek to make the kill shot. But then he simply _crumbles_. His knees buckle and when they hit the ground, everything below them turns to a gray powder. The rest of him swiftly follows and only seconds after Stiles had lashed out, the bandit is nothing more than a pile of dust on the ground. 

“Have you ever-”

“Done that before? No,” Stiles finishes, staring down at his still outstretched hand and Derek can't help but find it fascinating how Stiles picks up the ends of his sentences as easily as he picks up guns. In only a few moments, Stiles has gone from his ordinary periwinkle blue to something more electric, practically neon in its vibrancy. It's so bright that Derek can see the patterns through Stiles' clothes. 

In one word, it's magnificence. Derek doesn't think he's ever seen anything more beautiful in his life. But in another word, it's danger; he can practically smell the energy rolling off of Stiles' body and he feels like he's standing in the middle of one of the rollicking lightning storms that tend to rock Pandora in the hot summer months. He can't look away (doesn't _want_ to look away) but he's all too aware that one wrong movement on Stiles' part is all it would take to send that lethal energy in his direction.

“We should keep going,” Derek says and Stiles finally drops his hand back to his side, fingers clenching and releasing. 

“Yeah. Right.” Stiles takes the lead like nothing out of the ordinary has happened but rather than stepping over the mound of ash that was formerly a man, he drags the toe of his boot through it, scattering the dust in every which direction. 

After that, the bandits start coming out of the woodwork and although they're still plenty dangerous, there seems to be something off about them. For the most part, they aren't shouting obscenities or threats and Derek swears that some of them actually move themselves into the path of bullets that should have missed them. After one frantic firefight that leaves him with ringing ears and and sweat dripping from his brow, Derek takes a moment to catch his breath, back pressed against the wall beside the door, listening for any more approaching footsteps. 

“This doesn't feel right,” Stiles says. His hair is sticking up and although he hasn't disintegrated any more bandits, Derek has a feeling it's only because he's holding himself back.

“I know.” Derek's memories of Argent's may not be as expansive as Stiles', but he remembers what his mom had said about the man. He'd been organized, meticulous, always demanding strict obedience. He never would have allowed his compound to fall into such disrepair, to be so sickeningly filthy. And he certainly never would have allowed his bandits to be so clumsy, to almost seem _scared_. 

They exchange no more words; they continue to move on, down a long hallway lit only by the occasional swinging lightbulb. The place is eerily silent; other than the very faint hum of some kind of machinery, there's only the sound of their footsteps. The hallway is slightly cleaner than the rest of the compound but, somehow, the smell of death has only gotten worse. The trail of blood is still continuing underneath their feet but it too feels wrong; when Derek steps in it, it seems more sticky than slick, like he's walking on oil or quicksand. When he peers down, squinting at the liquid in the dim light, that _wrong_ feeling only grows. 

“Stiles,” he says quietly, stopping to crouch. When Stiles kneels beside him, the additional illumination from his skin provides enough light to confirm Derek's suspicions. 

The liquid on the floor can't be blood; at the very least least, it isn't human. Humans don't bleed black.

“What the fuck?” Stiles presses the tips of his fingers into the liquid and when he brings it closer to his eyes, somehow examining it without gagging, Derek watches as his skin pales; even his marks dim rapidly, like he's a lamp that someone has unplugged.

“This isn't possible,” he stutters, flicking the gunk off the ends of his fingers like it's burned him. 

“What is it?” The substance is similar in color to motor oil but it smells too foul to be that. Stiles slowly stands back up, his eyes huge and wild, looking like he's seen a ghost. 

“This isn't possible,” he simply repeats and before Derek can do more than reach out his hand, he turns on his heel and bolts towards the door, nearly slipping in the gunk streaked across the floor. 

“Stiles!” Derek yells, already running as well. The hallway opens onto a vast room filled with crates and shipping containers and although Stiles has only a few seconds lead on him, Derek just barely manages to catch a glimpse of him as he disappears through a small door on the other side of the warehouse. Derek picks up his pace, running as fast as he can. The area after that is a warren of hallways and Derek doesn't see Stiles at all; he simply hears him, and he runs after the sound of Stiles' footsteps and the screaming that accompanies them.

The trail of blood has been nearly hidden by a trail of all-out destruction. One scream is cut off abruptly and when Derek turns a corner, there are two mounds of ash in the middle of the hallway, mounds that he suspects were once humans. The next bandit isn't so lucky; when Derek comes across him, he's sitting on the floor, face pale as snow, fresh red blood spattered down the front of his shirt and along the wall behind him. His left arm is lying a few feet away from him, the stump ragged from being blasted away from the man's body. 

Derek briefly wonders if it would be merciful to put a bullet in the man's brain, but then there's more screaming coming from up ahead and he keeps running, leaving the man to shriek behind him. 

By the time Derek reaches the end of the labyrinth of hallways, his boots are drenched with blood and he's certain he'll never get the smell out of his nostrils. The room he finds himself in is massive, stretching skyward at least three stories to a domed ceiling. The amount of effort it must have taken to carve the thing out of the mountain is astounding but he doesn't have time to think about that right now, not when Stiles is only a few feet away, kneeling on the floor in a patch of the black substance, which is thick as tar. His shoulders are heaving and Derek can hear him panting but his head is upright, staring directly at the-

Oh God. 

Derek had glanced only briefly at the towering pillar in the middle of the room, more concerned with finding out if Stiles was still alive to really pay it any mind. But now, as he steps up beside Stiles, he can feel absolute horror rising in his throat. 

There's a woman sitting at the bottom of the pillar, attached to it by thick manacles that are shackled around her wrists and ankles, wearing a sleeveless brown dress. A number of IV's are stuck in her arms and chest, some filled with red liquid, others black, others clear. They disappear around the sound of the pillar until they're out of view. Her brown hair, shot through with streaks of grey, is thick and matted and cascades down to the floor, blocking her face from view. Her left arm and foot are covered in marks that are glowing a faded pink and Derek's hand drops onto Stiles' shoulder, although whether he's holding himself up or trying to provide comfort, he doesn't really know. 

“That can't be her,” he says out loud, eyes still fixated on the woman. “I thought you said-” 

“I did,” Stiles says softly and at the sound of his voice, the woman stirs slightly, like she's been brushed by a breeze. “But that's her. That's my mom.” The last word does the trick; the woman slowly lifts her head, groaning slightly and when her hair falls away from her face, Derek sees a small, upturned nose and a pair of amber eyes that match her son's. 

“Mom,” Stiles says again and he no longer sounds like a man; he sounds like a scared young boy and Derek grips his shoulder harder.

“Stiles?” The woman's voice is creaky but as her pale lips turn up slightly at the corners, the patterns on her skin seem to grow just a little bit brighter. “Is that really you?” Stiles nods and Derek feels a hot tear drop onto his hand. 

“Yeah Mom. It's really me.” His mother smiles even wider but when she parts her lips as if to speak, no words come out. Instead, she starts coughing and it's a horrible, thick sound, a _wet_ sound that shakes her entire body and after a few moments, black liquid starts dripping from her lips, spewing onto the floor and suddenly, Stiles' earlier panic makes perfect sense. Derek imagines its like he's reliving all his worst memories again. 

“She's dying, you know.” 

The voice is coming from behind the pillar and Derek freezes; it's been years but he remembers Argent's voice exactly and it sounds nothing like the one he's just heard. A shadow falls across the floor and when the owner of the voice steps into view, Derek feels his stomach drop into the floor.

It's not Argent. 

Physically, Argent hadn't been a very imposing man; he'd been fairly old, bald, his skin stretched tight around the bones on his face. But while the man standing in front of them is of average height, his frame is covered in muscle and he has a head full of brown hair. His lips are dark, nearly the color of a bruise. He's wearing a pair of dark glasses and although he is confidently striding forward, there's a small white cane tucked into a belt loop on his pants. 

“What?” Stiles says quietly and Derek suspects it's a rhetorical question. 

“I said she's dying.” The man stops when he's standing beside Stiles' mother, whose lips are still filmed over with black gunk. “For real, this time. The explosion was a clever trick, I'll give her that, but it wasn't too effective. It _did_ kill Argent though, so at least that worked.” 

“So who are you then, the new top banana?” Stiles says and although his snark sounds convincing, Derek still catches the waver in his voice. The man shrugs, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Well, that's one way to put it. It's much easier to pretend you're someone else than to try and start a whole new bandit empire. My name's Deucalion. You probably don't remember me. I looked... a little different then. Didn't need these,” he chuckles, tapping one finger off the rim of his glasses. “But I remember you, Stiles.” He turns slightly, pointed towards Derek and although all signs point to the man being blind, Derek has the unshakable feeling that he's being stared at. 

“And you. I think I remember you too. It was your parents and your sister, wasn't it?” Derek doesn't answer, but that seems to be confirmation enough, based on the laughter that comes out of the man's oddly tinted lips. 

“I don't want to fight you,” he says, continuing to address Derek. “I have no reason to. If you walk away now, I promise that you will leave this place unharmed. But Stiles, on the other hand... I'm afraid I'm going to have to try to ask you to stay.” 

“And why the hell would I do that?” Stiles' mother makes a noise like she's about to speak again but instead, more black oil comes out of her mouth and the lines on her arms flicker and dim. 

“Because Argent was on to something. You Sirens are remarkable. He never really got to reap the benefits of your powers but me... well, let's say your mother has helped me tremendously. But not for much longer.” He reaches out and lightly jingles the thick manacle attached to her arm. 

“If you agree to stay, I'll let your mother go. You'll never see her again, of course, but I won't harm her any longer.”

“Stiles, don't listen to him!” The words are raspy, barely coherent and her eyes bulge with effort, like it's killing her to say them. For all Derek knows, it is. 

“You'd really let her go?” It sounds like Stiles hasn't even heard his mother at all; the snark is gone once again and Derek realizes just how hard his fingers are biting into Stiles' shoulder. “Really? So long as I stay, she lives?” 

“I'm a man of my word.” Stiles seems to take a moment to mull it over and Derek can't move, can't speak, feels like he's watching the whole exchange from within a bubble. 

“Stiles,” he finally manages to spit out and Stiles gets to his feet, putting his back to Deucalion and his mother. 

“I”m sorry Derek,” he sighs, his face drawn in a grim line. “It's my mom.” He takes a step forward, leans in and brushes his dry lips against Derek's cheekbone and for a moment, Derek is so caught up in the fact that this will be their first and only kiss that he nearly misses the words Stiles whispers in his ear. 

“It's okay. Get ready.” When he pulls away, he winks and although the action isn't at all suited for the somber mood, Derek still understands. When Stiles turns around again, his face is the very image of stoic acceptance. 

“Okay.” When Stiles starts walking forward, Deucalion smiles broadly, almost unnaturally so. 

The man's gums are black as pitch, shiny with the same gunk that is coating the floor. 

“Stiles!” Derek yells but it's too late; the lines on Stiles' skin have racheted up to electric blue and he pushes his hand out, palm first, energy crackling between his fingers like lightning. It's the same action that had rendered flesh and blood into dust only moments before but Deucalion hardly even flinches; he takes a single step back, grin still splitting his face. Derek sees a flicker of panic cross Stiles' face before it's masked by a grim smile as he repeats the action. This time, it has even less of an effect; Deucalion actually laughs, tossing his head back towards the ceiling. 

“You can't be serious,” he chuckles, taking his glasses off and rubbing at the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. “You didn't actually think it would be that easy.” He folds his glasses up neatly and tucks them into his jacket pocket and when he looks up, his eyes are open. There's no pupil, no iris, just a flat sheet of cherry-red and Derek raises his revolver. If he's quick, he might be able to get a shot off and even if it doesn't kill, it might slow the man down or-

Without warning, he's slammed in the chest by an invisible force. The impact takes him off his feet, sends him flying across the room into the very hard wall. He slides to the floor and for a few moments, he's the one who can't see; the world is an indecipherable blur, flickering in and out and although he can hear faded voices, most of his nerves and senses are focused on the pain coursing through his body. He shuts his eyes, barely aware that he's groaning in pain, and tries to sift through the agony in order to catalog his injuries. He's pretty sure that one of his ribs is cracked, or severely bruised at least and based on precedent, he's going to have a splitting headache for a few hours. 

He's had worse. 

He opens his eyes again and forces himself to sit up, bracing against the wall, biting the inside of his cheek when the pain in his ribs spikes. Stiles is still standing in the same position, his arm extended outward and Deucalion is just staring at him with his empty red eyes. 

Derek doesn't profess to understand what the hell is going on, how the blind man is somehow not even flinching against the power of a Siren or how he seems to posses his own Siren powers to some extent. And he has no time to ponder any of these thoughts because even as he struggles to his feet, he hears multiple sets of heavy, quick footsteps coming down the hallway. Although he can also hear noise coming from behind him, can hear Stiles groaning with effort and his mother yelling in her raspy voice, he can't focus on it, not now, when there are bandits coming down the hallway. 

So he brings his rifle up, plants his feet firmly on the ground and takes a deep breath.


	4. good riddance.

By the time the battle is over, Derek's ribs are the least of his concerns. 

At the very least, all of the bandits have bit the dust; the floor of the room is slick with blood and Derek can feel it leaking through his boots. The back of his hand is raw and red, broken open from a grenade that had spewed acid. He's littered in cuts and so many bullet grazes that he doesn't think he could even count them all. 

But none of those things really concern him. _Stiles_ concerns him. 

The younger man has dropped to his knees and although his arm is still outstretched, it seems to be a feeble gesture; the lines on his skin are so faded that Derek can hardly discern them. Decualion seems to tower above him and although his back is to Derek, Derek has this feeling that the blind man is grinning. He's also talking but Derek doesn't focus on the words. He _does_ focus in on the way that Decualion's body seems to acquiring a faint red glow, like he's a bomb waiting to go off. 

_Derek._

Derek hears his name faintly but clearly, as if someone was whispering to him. But there's no one behind him (that's alive, at least) and when he scans the room, the only person who seems to be looking in his direction at all is -

Oh. Of course. 

_Derek. Can you hear me?_ Shifting his eyes from Stiles' mother to her son, whose pale face is drenched in sweat and specks of blood, he nods slightly. 

_Okay. I can help him. But not unless that IV comes out._ She rolls her head towards the IV containing black liquid, which is still attached to her arm. _It's making me too weak to use most of my powers. But if you get rid of it..._

“Okay,” Derek murmurs out loud and from underneath her curtain of brown hair, he catches a quick glimpse of a grim, yet determined, smile. Decualion still doesn't seem to be paying him any mind; he's stepped closer to Stiles and he's pulled a needle from one of his other pockets, a needle that is filled with the same black liquid that is keeping his mother nearly incapacitated.

Derek may not be able to get revenge on the man who murdered his family, but he can certainly do this. 

He drops back down to the ground, taking his rifle off his back as he does so. He's aware that the blood on the floor is soaking through the front of his clothes but it's like it's happening to someone else, someone far away. He is completely focused on the task at hand. He raises the rifle and gets the tubing of the IV within his sights. It's not a very large target, only an inch or so in diameter, and he knows that one chance is all he'll have. 

So he takes a final gulp of air, waits until his hands are completely steady, and fires. 

For a few, heart-stopping seconds, he's positive that he's missed, or that Decualion will whip around and catch the bullet. But just as the man begins to turn, taking his eyes off Stiles for the first time in minutes, the shot goes true. The IV snaps in half, spraying black liquid through the air. When Decualion completes his turn, there's a snarl on his face, a snarl that makes him look more animal than human and Derek swallows once, adjusting his aim until the crosshairs of his scope are centered on the man's forehead, which is bulging with veins. There are countless thoughts racing through his head, thoughts that he's surely about to die, thoughts that Stiles is looking at him with wide eyes, but there's no time to even consider any of these thoughts. 

He pulls the trigger and this shot goes wide, veering away from Decualion's forehead almost like he commanded it to do so. But it makes no difference; there's a loud crack, like a rock being split to pieces and when he takes his eye away from the scope of his rifle, he sees that Stiles' mother has destroyed one of the manacles around her wrist, which is now glowing a vivid magenta. Decualion's face wavers for just a moment, his scowl briefly flickering in favor of something more fearful.

“Do you really think that you'll be able to stop me?” he growls, fully turning his back on Stiles. “I'm going to chain you and your brat up and drain every last bit of power from your freak bodies.”

“No.” It's one word, said through lips still covered in black gunk, but it makes a shiver run down Derek's spine. Her voice has a strange echoing quality to it, like there are two people speaking in sync and it's an effect Derek has heard before. The manacle around her other wrist pops off, clattering against the pillar and Derek can see bolts of pink energy surging between her fingertips. Decualion lunges forward with the needle but with only a slight movement of her finger, the needle disintegrates, crumbling into a pile of glass and metal. As the shattered remnants of the needle fall to the floor, Decualion full on _roars_ , like a thing out of a nightmare. 

There are two more cracks in quick succession and then Stiles' mother is on her feet, lunging forward. As soon as her palm strikes Decualion's broad chest, he freezes. Or, rather, he _slows down_ ; as Derek gets to his feet, jogging across the room to where Stiles is still on his knees, he can see that Decualion is still slowly moving through the air, just at a speed nearly undetectable to the human eye.

“Go!” Stiles' mother says and even with the black gunk dried around her mouth and her hair tangled around her face, she's still as beautiful and awe inspiring as she'd been when Derek was five. Her eyes lock onto Stiles' face and although she isn't saying anything audible, Derek has a feeling that Stiles can hear her nonetheless. The younger man nods and Derek pulls him to his feet, slinging his faintly glowing arm over his own shoulder. His skin is so hot that Derek can feel it singeing the fabric of his shirt, but he ignores it; he thinks it's about time he replaced his clothes anyways. 

They manage to get to the door of the room, both of them limping, before anything happens. Decualion continues to move almost imperceptibly and Stiles' mom continues to stand still, motionless except for the rise and fall of her chest. When they look back over their shoulders, the glow from her body is almost impossible to gaze at directly. 

_Thank you_ Derek hears in his mind, before there's a sudden flash of light and another crash. He slams his eyes closed and Stiles presses his face into Derek's shoulder and when they look up again, both Decualion and Stiles' mother are gone. They've left behind a massive crack in the stone pillar holding up the large room and before Derek's eyes, it continues to spider upwards, causing small bits and pieces of rock to come tumbling to the ground. 

“We need to move,” Stiles says and his voice is so raspy and cracked that Derek can hardly understand the words. _“Derek!”_

They run. Their feet slide through blood and gore and dust and both of them have knees that threaten to buckle at any moment but they keep running, trying to stay ahead of the deafening rumble threatening to swallow them. Derek dares not look back and based on how tightly Stiles is gripping his shoulder, he's certain that Stiles dares not either.

The front door of the compound is, mercifully, still open and the morning sun is peeking above the horizon, lighting up the sky in vivid hues of orange and red. The ground seems to be sinking beneath their very feet and suddenly, Derek is sailing out the door, as if someone very large had shoved him very hard. He slams into the ground at least thirty feet away and he can't bite back a scream as agony goes searing along the line of his cracked rib. There's a thud as Stiles collapses beside him but the noise of him hitting the ground is almost lost underneath the steadily increasing roar coming from behind them. 

When he rolls onto his back, there's sand up his nose and fresh blood dripping from his lip. Stiles is beside him, wheezing, his lines glowing a very, very faint blue. The mountain appears to be falling apart ; parts of it have already slid away, tumbling over the edge of the cliff that it rises above, while other parts are collapsing inward. What's left appears to be steadily sinking and although Derek is fairly certain that they're safe where they are, he manages to stumble to his feet, pulling Stiles up with him. They amble down the slope towards the encampment and although there are a few raak here and there, they seem more interested in munching on the dead bandits than paying any attention to him and Stiles. Nonetheless, he steers clear of them and continues limping out the gate. It's only when he reaches the area where they'd made camp before that he finally allows himself to collapse. 

They don't speak for a very, very long time and despite the pain coursing through his body, Derek is fairly certain that he falls asleep. When he comes to, the sun is high in the sky, although the boulders they are surrounded by provide them with sufficient shade. Stiles is lying beside him, face pressed into Derek's chest, his arm flung out so that his fingers are closed around Derek's hip. His lines are glowing brighter now, nearly back to their default periwinkle color and it takes Derek a moment to realize that Stiles isn't sleeping; rather, he's looking up at him, his lips parted slightly. 

“Hey big guy,” he says quietly and his voice is a little less raspy now. There's a streak of blood on his cheekbone and Derek scratches at it with his thumbnail until he can see the blue line underneath it. 

“Hey,” Derek says. His voice is raspy as well, but that's just from thirst and being tired. Even though he has managed to scrape most of the blood off of Stiles' cheek, he doesn't stop moving his thumb back and forth, using it to trace the blue lines that he can reach. “What did your mom say to you, back there?” 

“That she'd be back. I believe her.” A single tear drips from Stiles' eye, cutting a track through the dirt and sweat and Derek catches it on the tip of his thumb.

“Me too.” 

They fall back into silence and Derek thinks he drifts off again, just for a few moments. When his eyes flutter back open, Stiles is hovering over him, propped up on one arm. 

“I know we said we'd talk about everything when we made it out,” he says quietly, his amber eyes fixed on Derek's face. “But honestly, I really just want to kiss you now. Alright?” 

“Okay.” With that, Stiles surges forward and even though he still feels as if exhaustion has leeched its way into every muscle and nerve in his body, Derek leans up to meet him, opening his mouth to Stiles' warm lips. Stiles tastes like like the air during a lightning storm and Derek's hand latches onto the back of his neck, pulling him in closer until Derek can feel rocks digging into his back and the warm planes of Stiles' body against his side. 

It doesn't last as long as Derek would like, but his body demands breath so he pulls away, eyes still closed, wondering if he's imagining the faint tingling sensation in his mouth. Stiles' forehead is still resting against his and his ribs are throbbing with the additional weight on them but Derek doesn't ask him to move, not yet. 

“Do you know what my mom told me once?” Stiles asks, his fingers still wrapped tight in the fabric of Derek's jacket. Derek senses it's a rhetorical question so he simply drags his hand through Stiles' hair again, some spots stiffened with blood and sweat. 

“She told me not to trust humans. She said they either wanted to kill us, or put us in museums so we can be stared at. But you... you _do_ stare at me, Derek, sometimes, but it doesn't feel like the same.” 

“It's not,” Derek says quietly, flicking his eyes back open and squinting slightly at the bright blue light emanating from Stiles' skin. “It's not like that at all.” 

“I believe you,” he answers quietly. “I really do.”

&. 

They fall asleep again soon after, in the same position as before and this time when Derek awakes, the sun has given away to a cloudless, moon-lit sky. He can make out Stiles' silhouette standing at the entrance to the clump of boulders, his hands dangling at his sides, staring up at the infinite number of stars dotting the sky. Derek gets to his feet, only wincing once as pain shoots through his ribs. He's still tired but he's not _exhausted_ and he has a feeling that all too soon, someone is going to discover the corpse-ridden pile of rubble and stone that used to be a safehouse and Derek thinks he wants to be long gone before that happens.

Once he's done packing his things up, he stands beside Stiles, who only moves to take Derek's hand. Up close, Derek can see that Stiles isn't actually looking at the sky; his eyes are shut and every so often, a furrow appears in his brow and his lines glow a little bit brighter. After a few moments, his head drops down and he smiles at Derek, squeezing his hand once. 

“Sorry. Mom was talking to me. It was hard to hear her but she said she's safe and Decualion is... occupied.” 

Derek doesn't know if that quite means dead, but it's good enough for him. 

“We should probably get going,” he says after a few moments of silence that he spends enjoying the feeling of Stiles' calloused palm pressed against his own. 

“Oh God, yes please,” Stiles groans, stepping away and scooping up his backpack from the ground. “I have dirt _everywhere_. And... and I'm done here.” 

“Me too.” 

Derek had seen one or two vehicles back at the bandit camp but turning back in that direction doesn't seem to be a real option. Besides, the things probably wouldn't work anyways. So him and Stiles set out on foot, boots crunching into the dry earth, searching for any sign of the creatures whose roars and screeches occasionally break through the night air. 

And not once do they drop the others hand. 

Just as the sun begins to peek over the horizon again, they find a vehicle. It's parked on the edge of the rutted track that serves as a road) and there's a lone bandit sitting in the driver's seat, a single bullet hole decorating his forehead. 

It might be a little morbid, but beggers can't be choosers, so they haul the man's body out and climb on in. Stiles hops into the driver's seat and even though Derek is still a little terrified that the Siren is going to flip the vehicle or run them into a rock, he can't stop his eyes from drooping closed. 

When he wakes up, the dirt and sand have fallen away to towering cliffs of smooth, gray rock and an actual paved road. It ends in a gate made of scrap metal and beyond that, there's a small town, where most of the buildings actually look sturdy and there's a minimum amount of garbage in the streets. It's an area he recognizes vaguely from childhood memories and thankfully, those memories include a hotel with hot water. 

“Is that Tartarus Station?” he asks, dropping his head over the edge of the gunner seat so that Stiles can hear him. 

“Yep. Figured we could both go for sleeping on something that isn't a rock. And from here, we can take the train to... well, wherever you want to go.” 

There's only the one hotel in town, a three-story building with wind-whipped white walls that stands a little crooked, but Derek is unsurprised to hear that it has vacancies. The room they pay for with blood-stained money is on the top floor and has a fairly unspectacular view of the tiny town of Tartarus Station. It's small; there's room enough for a bed and a trunk on the floor but it has a bathroom attached to it and if Derek is right, that bathroom has hot water. 

“Even if that is true,” Stiles says after Derek informs him of that fact, tearing his shirt over his head, “it probably doesn't have a _lot_ of hot water. What I'm saying is that we should shower together. To conserve the water, of course.” The smirk he shoots in Derek's direction is one he's seen before, but it seems softer this time, like there's something else behind it. 

Derek nods and starts shedding his own filthy clothes as well. 

The shower cubicle is really too small really for two people, but that doesn't stop them. The water isn't so much hot as it is slightly above luke-warm but nonetheless, Derek eagerly turns his face into it, washing away the blood and grime and sweat coating his skin. The wound on his hand stings when the water touches it and his ribs are still throbbing but he thinks it's the closest to a heavenly situation he's ever experienced. 

Especially since Stiles is standing in front of him with his forehead resting on the wall of the cubicle, back dripping with stray droplets of water, his lines glowing a deep navy blue. 

“Do they mean anything?” Derek asks, reaching out one scarred finger and tracing a section of patterns on Stiles' hip. He shivers just the slightest and shakes his head, making more droplets fall from his damp hair. 

“Not that I know of. Mom said they're just random.” He moves backwards two steps and that's all it takes to close the distance between them, to press his back against Derek's chest. Derek presses his mouth to Stiles' shoulder and wraps his arm around the other man's waist before he lets the water continue doing its job. When the water at their feet begins to run clear rather than a murky gray color, he moves his mouth again, dragging it along the slick skin of Stiles' shoulder to the long line of his neck. 

“Jesus Derek,” Stiles groans, his fingers closing around where Derek's thumb is brushing over his hipbone. The pushback of his hips is barely perceptible, but it's still there and when Derek responds, his half-hard cock sliding against the curve of Stiles' ass, the lines on his skin flare bright enough to make Derek see spots. 

“We can't do this in here,” Stiles pants, his head reaching behind and back until his fingers are wrapped in the hair at the base of Derek's neck. “Too small. Bed.” Derek picks out the meaning from the fractured words and he nods, teeth tugging gently at Stiles' earlobe. 

“Okay,” he pants, groaning as his hips push forward again of their own will, barely summoning the willpower to reach behind himself and turn off the water. 

Despite how badly he wants to run into the other room and pull Stiles onto the mattress, Derek takes a few moments to dry his skin off, to quickly examine the bruises and scratches on his chest and arms and wrap a bandage from the shelf around his hand. When he walks out into the bedroom, Stiles is sitting on the edge of the bed, his palm outstretched and glowing with turquoise pulses of energy. After a moment, his fingers curl in a fist and there's a brief flash before the energy fades away from his hand. 

“What was that?” Derek asks, a towel still wrapped around his waist. Stiles turns to grin at him and quick as a snake, he reaches out and undoes the knot holding up Derek's towel. 

“I put everyone on this floor to sleep. Because if there's one thing I still don't trust, it's how loud I'm going to be.” Without taking his eyes off Derek's, he holds his hand out again and the lightbulb that is dangling from the ceiling spurts out and dies, leaving the room to only be illuminated by the sunlight coming through the thin, frayed curtains. 

“Now please, get down here and kiss me.” 

Derek does just that. He kisses every inch of Stiles he can reach, he drags his fingers over the lines on his skin, he runs his tongue over old scars and new bruises that still tastes like lightning. 

The room glows like a galaxy. 

When Derek bites down on Stiles' collarbone, his skin glows vivid orange, like the brightest of sunsets. When he first wraps a hand around Stiles' cock, Stiles' entire body shudders and Derek's vision seems to be overtaken by neon green. When Stiles sinks down onto Derek's cock, fingers scrabbling at Derek's shoulders, the long lines of his limbs take on a purple tinge. After that, Derek can hardly keep up with the changes; one moment, Stiles is blue again, the next he's red and then in the blink of an eye, he's returned to orange. 

“I'm sorry,” he pants against Derek's mouth, his cock brushing between their stomachs as he rises and falls. “I can't control it.” 

“Don't apologize,” Derek growls, the headboard digging into his back, his hands gripping Stiles' thighs. “ _Never_ apologize for what you are.” Derek can feel the still healing wound that Stiles had cauterized underneath his hand, shifting and flexing with every move of Stiles' hips. It seems like ages ago that Derek had witnessed that, that he had felt a stab of panic go through his heart at the sight of so much blood coming from Stiles' body. The memories before that, of Stiles snarking at him and trying to kill him in the darkness of a cave, seem like they never even happened, like he'd read them in a book. 

He gently runs his thumb over the wound and Stiles groans, throwing his head back and giving Derek access to his neck. Derek takes full advantage of it, dragging his teeth along Stiles' throat, sucking a bruise just under his jaw, relishing the rasp as his beard scrapes against Stiles' skin. Even with his eyes closed, he can see Stiles glowing like fireworks. 

He _is_ loud, there's no debating that. When Derek bends his neck and gently scrapes his teeth over one of Stiles' nipples, the man _sobs_. He talks and curses, sometimes in English, sometimes in a tongue Derek has never heard before, a tongue that sounds ancient and powerful, one he doesn't think was ever intended for human ears. 

“Derek, oh _God._ ” His voice has taken on that echoing quality again and his chest is covered in sweat, gleaming over the fine spattering of moles on the non-glowing side of his torso. His hair is mussed up and his fingers are coals pressing into Derek's shoulders and Derek moves his hand between them, wrapping his fingers against Stiles' slick, warm cock. 

“Fuck, _Stiles_ ,” he hisses, dropping his head back against the headboard, trying to keep the movement of his hand at a steady rhythm. Stiles is growing hotter and tighter around him with each passing second, a waterfall of moans and words tumbling from his mouth and Derek doesn't think he'll be able to hold himself back for much longer. It's too much, nothing less than a complete assault on the senses. 

“Derek, shut your eyes!” The words are all rushed together but Derek manages to untangle them just in time. He slams his eyes closed and as Stiles screams his name, Derek sees a flash of pure white light through his eyelids. His ears seem to be ringing but underneath that noise, Derek swears he can hear just the hint of a... well, he doesn't quite know how to describe it. It's like singing, maybe, but that doesn't seem completely accurate. It's unlike any noise he's ever heard a human make, and perhaps that's the point. 

Maybe he isn't supposed to be able to hear it at all. 

He follows Stiles soon after, groaning out the Siren's name, his eyes still slammed closed. When he comes back to himself, Stiles' forehead is resting against his shoulder, his hair and skin damp with sweat. He's still almost too bright to look at; his lines are electric blue and they seem to pulse with every breath Stiles takes. There are points of pain on Derek's back and he has a suspicious feeling that he has ten tiny burns there in the shape of fingertips. The pain in his ribs has also returned in full force and with every lungful of air he grabs, his chest throbs. 

He still think he's the happiest he's ever been in his life. 

“You know,” Stiles groans after a few long moments, his breath brushing over Derek's collarbone, “I think we're going to need another shower.”

This time, the water is freezing.

&.

They sleep. Derek wakes up only once; it's darker in the room but there's still light, spilling from both Stiles' skin and from the buildings outside. He's lying on his back, his ribs still occasionally throbbing. Stiles is lying on his stomach beside him, his leg slung over Derek's, palm splayed on his hip bone. Derek drags his fingers through Stiles' still-damp hair and receives a soft kiss on his chest in return.

“Where are you going to go?” Stiles murmurs. “Are you going to stay here?” Although Derek's head is still thick from sleep, his answer comes quickly. It's a question he's been putting a lot of thought into over the last few hours. 

“Definitely not staying here,” he replies. “I never want to see this planet again. I'll go to Eden-6 I guess, go see Cora and my uncle, try to avoid the Lance for as long as possible.”

“What do they do to deserters?” Derek sighs, squeezes the back of Stiles' neck. 

“Make them fight more. I don't want to kill people anymore, not unless I have to. I'm tired, Stiles.” 

“I know, Derek,” Stiles whispers against his shoulder, his hand tightening on Derek's hip. “Me too.”

&. 

When Derek comes out of slumber for good, Stiles is gone.

He hasn't completely vanished; one of his blood encrusted shirts is still lying on the floor near the door and the bed is still rumpled from his limbs. One of his guns, the florescent pink one that had really started everything, so long ago, is resting on top of the trunk on the floor and underneath that, there's a ragged piece of paper poking out. Derek scrambles off the bed as fast as he can and tugs it out from underneath the gun.

_Derek,_

_I'm sorry, I had to go. My mom needed me. But I hope Eden-6 is as beautiful as you remember it to be. I hope I can see it someday._

_Stiles_

It feels like he's been punched in the stomach and he wants to sink to his knees on the floor, wants to yell at the top of his lungs until his throat is shredded. It's not that he doesn't believe Stiles; he does, believes that the man would do anything for his mother and after everything they've both gone through, Derek doesn't blame the Siren one bit for leaving. 

But still. It hurts and it makes his own mother's words echo in his head, regardless of how hard he tries to block them out. 

_You should never trust a Siren, Derek._

He stumbles to his feet, trying to ignore the refrain in his mind, and that's when he stops. His movements should be making his cracked rib throb with agony, but there's nothing. No pain, at all, with the exception of the acid burn on his hand, which is still hidden under a bandage. He runs his fingers down his chest and presses, prepared for sickening pain. but the only thing he feels is the pressure from his fingertips. 

Stiles. It had to be Stiles and although Derek knows that the man had meant well healing him, it only makes him feel like he's been sucker punched again.

&. 

He doesn't stick around the hotel room; he pulls his filthy clothes back on and takes the first train out of town to the nearest port city. From there, he sneaks onto another freighter, snatching himself a place in the cargo hold amongst empty weapons crates. There's a tiny porthole sat into the hull of the ship and it's from there that he takes his last look at Pandora as the ship sluggishly ascends into the sky.

The desert stretches out below, dotted by humps of sand and sheer orange rock cliffs. Off in the distance, at the edge of the horizon, he can see the mountains, lightly covered in snow. They'd gone there a few times as children, when his parents had needed to do some trading in the stronghold of Sanctuary, but it's been decades since Derek saw the ice plains and frozen sea up close. 

Good fucking riddance. 

It takes a week of hopping from freighter to freighter, of snatching quick naps in cargo holds with his finger always on the trigger, before he is standing in the bright sun of Eden-6. It's always been one of his favorite planets that he's visited; it's mostly forests, broken up by crystal clear lakes and a few settlements here and there. It doesn't smell like death or trash or rust and most importantly, it's _peaceful_. It's been years since he had any real contact with his uncle or Cora, but it's the only option he has, so he sets off, trying (and mostly failing) to keep his mind off of Stiles. 

It takes four days before he's stepping out of the trees into a small clearing, his skin sunburned, his clothes still damp from being washed in a stream. His uncle's house still looks exactly the same; it's an expansive, two-story structure, made of sun-bleached, rough-hewn planks with numerous windows dotting its facade. There's a porch at the front, closed in with what looks like chicken wire and sitting on the steps, dressed in running clothes with her head down, is a young woman with long, dark brown hair. 

She's grown a lot since he last saw her, but he'd recognize his baby sister anywhere. 

“Hey Cora,” he says and when she looks up, the color has drained from her already pale skin. She stares at him for a few moments, face devoid of any expression but then she's jumping to her feet and flinging herself at him, hugging him with a strength that she _definitely_ didn't possess the last time he saw her. 

“They told us you were dead,” she says against his shoulder. “The Lance said you'd died in the field, Derek, that was _months_ ago!” 

“I'm sorry,” he says, squeezing her back just as tightly. “I'm sorry, Cora. I deserted. I had to do something.” She takes a step back and she looks so much like their mother that it's almost painful. 

“Argent,” she states rather than asks and the rough tone of her voice is something Derek knows all too well. She'd been young when their parents were killed, but her youth didn't mean she got a free pass on remembering their executions. 

“Dead. They're all dead,” he replies and although the story is really so much more than that, even without the Stiles part, she hugs him again before he can even consider saying any of it. 

Really, in the long run, he doesn't think the details matter anyways.

&. 

The weeks fly by quickly. His uncle is still kind of an asshole, but Derek expected nothing less and he's out of the house a lot working, whatever he means by that. Derek doesn't ask and Peter doesn't tell.

It's a good system. 

Cora works too. She does four days on, three days off at the nearest settlement, watching the perimeter, chasing off the predators that dot the planet's forests or occasionally imprisoning a bandit. This means that Derek is usually home alone and he spends the weeks reading, devouring the massive number of books that Peter has accumulated. 

His thoughts about Stiles come in jolts. For a few moments, that's all he can think about but the incapacitating thoughts leave as quickly as they arrived and he can go back to reading or running through the forest or swimming in the small stream that flows behind the house. 

But there comes one day where something seems off. Strange, even. 

He's sitting on the porch, a book in his hands, staring up at the sky. It's covered in towering purple clouds, which are occasionally split by forks of lightning that seem to have a pink tinge. Derek has never seen anything like it but before he can really think about it further, a sonic boom goes through the air, knocking him onto his back and sending his book flying through the open door of the house. It's accompanied by a brilliant magenta flash of light and when Derek sits back up, shielding his vision with his eyes, he realizes there are two figures standing in the yard that had been empty only moments before. When the glow in the air alleviates a bit, he can see a massive pair of glowing pink wings, made entirely from light and energy, protruding from the back of the figure on the left. She has long hair down to her waist, shot through with gray and when she raises her hand in a tiny wave, he realizes that there are glowing pink patterns on her arm as well, disappearing underneath the sleeve of her colorless tunic. 

“Hello Derek,” she says and she sounds so different from the woman that had spewed black ooze from her mouth that Derek can't help but feel a stab of simultaneous remorse and joy. 

“Hello,” he says quietly and although she's a vision of power and beauty, Derek can't help but be more entranced by the man standing beside her. Stiles is glowing as well, a turquoise color that reminds Derek of Pandora's expansive seas and he's bent in half at the waist, hands on his knees like he's dizzy. 

“Mom, can we _never_ do that again?” he groans and Derek realizes that's not dizziness, that's nausea. “I feel like my guts are about to come out my nose.” 

“Stiles, that's disgusting,” she replies, with only a slight amount of severity in her voice. Her wings shimmer and vanish as she leaves Stiles, coming over to where Derek is getting back to his feet. 

“It's nice to see you again,” she says. “I'm sorry for everything that happened. And I'm sorry that I asked him to leave when-”

“It's okay,” Derek says, feeling only momentarily guilty that he just interrupted a being who could crush him like a fly. “You're his family.” 

“Yes. But so are you.” She reaches out and brushes her hand over his temple and her smile grows bigger. Derek stands stock-still, his mind racing. “I know you didn't think so, but you're so important to him Derek. He broke my one rule for you, after all.” 

“Your one rule?” 

“Never trust a human. And somehow, I have this feeling you broke a rule of your own for him.” With that, she steps away from the porch and returns to where Stiles has straightened up, his skin still remarkably pale. Derek can't hear their conversation, but it's over quickly; Stiles' mother presses a quick kiss to his temple and then, with a flare of light and a glimpse of her wings, she vanishes into thin air. Stiles stares at the air where she'd been standing for a few seconds before he crosses the yard, standing at the edge of the steps like there's an invisible barrier preventing him from coming further. 

“Hey,” he says, hands shoved into the pockets of his bright red jacket, the sleeves of which have been ripped off. 

“Hey.” Derek doesn't know what else to say, doesn't know if he should make a move, if Stiles is going to say anything more. But after a moment, the younger man simply grins and practically bounces up the steps. 

“I'm sorry it took me so long,” he murmurs and Derek doesn't even have time to formulate an answer before Stiles' mouth is crashing against his, his tongue a line of warm heat dragging along the seam of Derek's lips. Derek likes this approach, likes their wordless way of saying everything that he's thought about over the last few weeks. He only pulls away when he can no longer breathe and even then, he can't stop himself from peppering Stiles' face in kisses, pressing them against the corner of his eyes and his nose and the lines that glow against his jaw. 

“My mom was right, you know,” Stiles says after a moment, pressing another lingering kiss to the corner of Derek's mouth.

“About what?” 

“About you being family. Not in the same way she is, obviously, but still. Family.” The side of Stiles' face that isn't garnished with glowing turquoise lines is flushing red. 

“You too,” Derek says quietly. “Family.” He leans back in for another round of kissing, this time softer, less hurried and when he pulls away from that, Stiles is grinning, such a contrast to the snarky smirk Derek had once thought to be his only way of smiling. 

“I want to go somewhere with you,” he murmurs, battle-scarred fingers holding onto the back of Derek's neck. “I want to see the planets you've talked about, we don't have to worry about the Lance anymore-”

“What?” Derek asks and Stiles flushes brighter, ducking his head down. 

“Mom still had some connections. She knows a guy who is good with computers so now, according to the Crimson Lance's files, you never served. You never deserted either.” Derek feels a smile of his own spreading across his mouth; although he'd believed the talk of the term family, there'd still been a hint of discomfort in his gut, a feeling that something bad was going to happen. But with Stiles' words, that feeling completely dissolves and he can't feel anything other than complete and utter relief. 

“Thank you,” he murmurs, pulling Stiles in as close as he can, “thank you Stiles, thank you so much” and when Stiles says _you're welcome_ , there's not a hint of sarcasm or snark in his voice. Just pure and utter happiness and something else, something that reminds Derek firmly of trust and protection and _love._

It's a something else that Derek could really get used to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone who read/commented/left kudos! you're all super rad.


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